XTbe  Tllntversft^  of  Gbicago 

FOIWDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED      TO     THE    FACULTY     OF     THE     GRADUATE    SCHOOL    OF     ARTS 

AND    LITERATURE,  IN    CANDIDACY    FOR    THE    DEGREE 

OF    DOCTOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  philosophy) 


BY 

KATE  GORDON 


CHICAGO 
1903 


EDUC. 

PSYCH. 

LIBRARr 


PRINTED  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

Introduction  -----------.-5 

The  Psychological  Interpretation  of  Value  ------      32 

I,    Meaning  from  the  Point  of  View  of  Activity  -        -        -        -        -  39 

11.   Meaning  in  Terms  of  Discrimination  ------      49 

III.  Meaning  as  Developed  in  Representation 66 

IV.  Meaning  under  the  Experimental  Method  -----      74 


130990 


INTRODUCTION 

A  SCIENTIFIC  statement  is  the  translation  of  current  general  no- 
tions about  a  subject-matter  into  the  language  and  conceptions  char- 
acteristic of  the  science  in  question.  What,  then,  is  the  current 
general  notion  of  meaning?  The  group  of  facts  which,  as  a  psycho- 
logical appearance,  finds  its  most  apt  designation  in  the  subjective 
category  meaning  we  recognize  as  objective  values  under  the  diverse 
forms  of  Worth  in  economics,  the  Good  in  ethics,  in  logic  the  True, 
and  in  aesthetics  the  Beautiful.  We  shall  find  that  only  the  normative 
or  projective  disciplines  —  those  which  reckon  specifically  with 
personality  as  a  legitimate  control  —  have  contributed  any  very 
considerable  doctrine  on  value.  In  view  of  these  observations  our 
first  question  is :  What  is  the  common  non-psychological  conception 
of  value  which  such  sciences  unite  to  afford?^ 

Economic  value. — Value  is  defined  by  A.  T.  Hadley  as  "An 
estimate  of  what  a  price  ought  to  be.  The  word  value  is  used  in  a 
number  of  different  meanings,  but  this  idea  of  a  permanent  standard 
or  cause  of  price,  as  distinguished  from  a  temporary  or  accidental 
phenomenon,  lies  at  the  basis  of  them  all."  ^  Economic  theories  of 
value  may  be  classed  into  two  chief  divisions,  represented  respec- 
tively by  the  English  and  the  Austrians.  The  early  English  school, 
as  developed  by  Smith  and  Ricardo,  has  become  identified,  whether 
justifiably  or  not,  with  the  view  which  lays  greatest  emphasis  upon 
the  analysis  of  supply  or  the  cost  of  production  as  the  determinant 
of  value ;  whereas  the  Austrian  writers,  together  with  Jevons,  have 
paid  special  attention  to  the  influence  upon  value  of  utility.  This 
feeling  of  the  former  school  for  the  importance  of  cost  as  a  standard 
may  be  followed  in  a  few  brief  citations. 

Adam  Smith  made  a  distinction  of  value  in  use  (utility)   from 

'^In  the  following  brief  discussions  of  the  economic,  the  aesthetic,  the  logical, 
the  ethical,  and  the  metaphysical  views  of  value,  there  is,  of  course,  no  attempt 
at  an  exhaustive  criticism  of  all  current  view-points,  but  merely  an  outline,  in 
each  case,  of  what  seems  to  me  an  acceptable  view-point.  Neither  is  there  any 
extended  list  of  references  to  other  writers.  Many  eminent  names,  therefore, 
have  not  been  mentioned,  for  the  reason  that  the  citations  are  made  with  a  view 
rather  to   point  the   moral   than   to   adorn   the   tale. 

2  Baldwin's    Philosophical    Dictionary,    on    "  Value." 

5 


6  OAT  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

value  in  exchange,  and  maintained  that  only  exchange  value  was 
the  proper  subject  of  economic  theory.^  The  group  of  early  econo- 
mists which  Smith  represents  pointed  by  a  familiar  illustration  to 
the  fact  that  the  "  free  gifts  of  nature  "  which  have  a  great  utility 
can  command  nothing  in  exchange.  Water,  they  said,  has  high 
value  in  use,  but  it  cannot  be  sold  for  a  price  ;  because  it  is  unlimited, 
it  has  no  value  in  exchange.  Diamonds,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
no  utility,  but  because  of  their  scarcity  they  have  a  high  power  in 
exchange.  It  was  the  external  or  objective  limit  which  struck  them 
as  the  really  coercive  factor,  and  it  is  significant  to  recall  that  they 
regarded  it  as  an  instance  of  divine  goodness  —  and  in  no  wise  due 
to  the  operation  of  previous  human  demand  and  effort  —  that  the 
greatest  necessities  of  life  should  be  the  cheapest  or  the  most  easily 
available ;  it  is  through  God's  bounty  that  we  are  able  to  get  bread 
and  water  more  cheaply  than  diamonds.  John  Stuart  Mill  formu- 
lated his  theory  of  value  under  a  like  inspiration.  He  posited 
utility  as  one  limit  of  value,  but  gave  the  most  of  his  attention  to  a 
discussion  of  the  other  limit  which  is  imposed  by  the  difficulty  of 
attainment  of  any  good.  Mill  and  his  followers  seem  to  have  taken 
it  for  granted  that  desire  and  utility  are  relatively  simple,  constant 
factors,  not  in  need  of  discussion. 

Ricardo  says :  "If  any  one  commodity  could  be  found  which 
now  and  at  all  times  required  precisely  the  same  quantity  of  labor 
to  produce  it,  that  commodity  would  be  of  an  unvarying  value."* 
Also :  "  Possessing  utility  commodities  derive  their  exchange  value 
from  two  sources :  from  their  scarcity,  and  from  the  quantity  of 
labor  required  to  obtain  them."  ^  Thus  Ricardo  like  Mill  appears  to 
have  taken  utility  as  a  factor  whose  law  is  self-evident,  and  to  have 
employed  himself  almost  exclusively  upon  the  elucidation  of  the 
other  determinant.  It  is  to  be  remarked,  however,  that  both  Mill 
and  Ricardo,  in  bringing  forward  the  element  of  labor  as  the  expres- 
sion of  the  limiting  factor  which  regulates  value,  have  taken  a  step 
toward  the  translation  of  pure  objective  scarcity  into  terms  of 
subjective  estimate,  i.  e.,  sacrifice  or  disutility  of  labor.  The  extreme 
of  the  above  view  —  championed  by  Karl  Marx  —  states  that  the 
natural  value  of  things  consists  solely  in  the  labor  put  upon  them. 

The  correlative  view  brought  forward  by  the  Austrians  may  be 
put  as  follows :     The  fundamental  observation  on  value  is  that  it 

^Wealth  of  Nations,  Book  I,  chap.  4. 

*' Political  Economy,  chap,  i,  sec.  11.  ^Ibid.,  sec.   3. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

is  to  be  defined  as  the  object  of  human  desire,  or  as  that  which 
"avails  toward  Hfe."  From  the  outset  there  is  a  recognition  that 
the  "  emergence "  of  value  is  conditioned  by  the  scarcity  of  goods 
or  by  some  obstacle  to  the  satisfaction  of  want  But  in  contrast 
with  the  English  writers,  who  would  make  value  vary  precisely 
with  the  stringency  of  this  limit,  the  Austrians  maintain  that  the 
strength  of  the  organic  craving  is  a  more  legitimate  measure  of 
value.  When,  for  illustration,  the  craving  is  strong,  a  slight  stricture 
is  quickly  felt  and  value  appears ;  but  where  the  desire  is  slight, 
there  is  no  consciousness  of  value  at  all  until  supply  is  quite  con- 
siderably diminished.     To  quote  from  Smart: 

Now  if,  in  any  class  of  goods,  the  supply  is  not  sufficient  to  meet  this 
demand  for  satisfaction  (either  as  regards  the  individual  or  the  community), 
some  want  goes  unsatisfied;  the  painful  feeling  of  emptiness  points  to  some 
good  or  other  as  the  condition  of  a  certain  well-being;  the  relation  of 
dependence  between  person  and  thing  is  established,  and  value  emerges.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  supply  of  any  class  of  goods  is  so  great  that  every 
demand  is  met,  and  yet  there  is  such  a  surplus  that  no  ordinary  waste  will 
cause  scarcity,  then  no  want  goes  unsatisfied,  and  value  does  not  emerge. 
....  In  short,  the  center  of  value  is  within  us.' 

Again : 

The  value  of  a  stock  of  similar  goods  is  the  value  of  the  marginal  good 
multiplied  by  the  number  of  goods  in  the  stock;' 

for: 

When  the  quantity  of  any  good  produced  is  increased,  the  good  is  put  to 
lower  levels  of  use;  the  last  want  supplied  determines  the  last  satisfaction; 
and  this  last  satisfaction  determines  the  value  of  all  the  stock.* 

To  summarize:  We  must  conclude  with  Marshall,  concerning 
the  controversy  whether  "  cost  of  production  "  or  "  utility  "  governs 
value,  that  "  we  might  as  reasonably  dispute  whether  it  is  the  upper 
or  the  under  blade  of  a  pair  of  scissors  that  cuts  a  piece  of  paper."  ® 
The  general  formula  of  demand  and  supply  is  developed  in  more 
detail  by  the  theory  of  marginal  utilities,  and  this,  philosophically 
expressed,  means  that  certain  objects  are  designed  to  meet  the 
demands  of  habit  (/.  e.,  they  have  utility),  and  that  the  interruption 
or  denial  of  a  habit  is  the  occasion  of  a  conscious  valuation  of  that 
object;    hence  the  ungratified  want,  which  will  of  course  be  the 

^Introduction  to  Theory   of   Value,  chap.   3,  p.    16. 
''Ibid.,  chap.  5,  p.  32.  ^Ibid.,  p.  33. 

^Principles  of  Economics,  Book  V,  chap.  3,  par.  7. 


8  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

least  important  want,  measures  the  degree  of  importance  which  we 
attach  to  the  object.  When  we  say  that  supply  has  decreased  or 
demand  has  increased,  we  are  also  saying  that  ungratified  want  has 
become  more  urgent.  If  we  could  fancy  that  there  were  just  one 
habit  in  the  world,  then  the  value  of  its  object  would  be  either 
infinity  or  zero,  according  as  the  habit  were  checked  or  unchecked 
but  the  existence  of  a  plurality  of  habits  and  wants  makes  possible 
the  appearance  of  a  "  marginal "  want,  and  the  possibility  of  ascrib- 
ing to  goods  various  values  according  to  the  amount  or  number  of 
other  goods  which  will  be  sacrificed  for  them.  Value,  then,  is  an 
estimate,  or  equation.  In  the  phrase  of  von  Wieser,  it  is  the 
"  calculation-form  of  utility."  It  is  a  ratio  in  which  the  denominator 
is  the  area  of  gratified  want  and  the  numerator  is  the  field  of 
ungratified  desire. 

Esthetic  value  must  depend  for  its  placing  upon  the  definition  of 
beauty.    Says  Bosanquet: 

Among  the  ancients  the  fundamental  theory  of  the  beautiful  was  con- 
nected with  the  notions  of  rhythm,  symmetry,  harmony  of  parts;  in  short 
with  the  general  formula  of  unity  in  variety.  Among  the  moderns  we  find 
that  more  emphasis  is  laid  on  the  idea  of  significance,  expressiveness,  the 
utterance  of  all  that  life  contains;  in  general,  that  is  to  say,  on  the  con- 
ception of  the  characteristic." 

Spencer  and  Grant  Allen  agree  substantially  in  the  formula  of  the 
latter  which  reads : 

The  aesthetically  beautiful  is  that  which  affords  the  Maximum  of  Stimula- 
tion with  the  Minimum  of  Fatigue  or  Waste,  in  processes  not  directly  con- 
nected with  vital  functions." 

Santayana  tells  us  that  the  science  of  beauty  is  concerned  with  per- 
ception or  susceptibility,  but  also  with  a  critical  attitude  toward  its 
subject-matter;  hence  that  aesthetics  deals  with  the  "sphere  of 
critical  or  appreciative  perception."  ^^ 

Another  definition  of  beauty  suggests  itself  which  offers  some 
promise  as  a  harmonizing  formula  for  several  difficult  facts.  Ac- 
cording to  this  definition,  beauty  is  that  which  unexpectedly  offers 
a  secondary  or  auxiliary  stimulus  to  any  act.  In  order  to  develop 
this  point  of  view,  let  us  first  see  what  the  facts  are  which  suggest 

^° History  of  Esthetic,  chap,   i,  sec.  3. 
'^^Physiological  Esthetics,  chap.  3,  sec.  3. 
^-The  Sense  of  Beauty,   Part   I,   sec.    i,   p.    16. 


INTRODUCTION  9 

it,  and  then  try  whether  the  saHent  points  in  other  aesthetic  theories 
may  not  be  taken  care  of  under  this  formula  as  well. 

The  dispute  concerning  the  connection  of  beauty  with  utility 
has  reached  the  point  where  it  would  seem  that  only  the  unadvised 
could  venture  to  speak  without  the  backing  of  extended  research. 
Nevertheless,  the  following  points  are  once  more  presented : 

1.  Very  many  undeniably  aesthetic  experiences  do  serve  utilitar- 
ian purposes.  Examples  are  the  work-songs  and  battle-chants  of 
savage  tribes,  the  part  played  by  rhythm  in  facilitating  work  as 
demonstrated  in  recent  experimentation,  and  the  moral  discipline 
and  regeneration  which  are  effected  by  some  music. 

2.  Standards  of  beauty  are  changed  both  for  the  individual  and 
for  the  race  in  the  working  out  of  practical  adjustments.  Fechner^^ 
points  out,  for  example,  the  influence  on  taste  of  suggestion,  asso- 
ciation, racial  experience,  etc. 

3.  A  close  connection  between  the  good,  the  true  and  the  beautiful 
is  indicated  in  the  characterization  of  the  good  as  the  bringing 
together  of  the  ideal  and  the  real,  the  true  as  the  correspondence  of 
the  idea  to  its  object,  and  of  the  beautiful  as  an  absorption  of  the 
subject  in  the  object.  Furthermore,  in  popular  speech  we  tend  to 
call  moral  action  and  apt  demonstration  beautiful,  as  well  as  to  say 
that  beauty  is  right  and  true  in  itself. 

4.  The  " detachedness "  or  "disinterestedness"  of  aesthetic  ap- 
preciation is  not  peculiar  to  it.  As  Hirn^*  suggests,  there  may  be 
an  equally  devoted  self-surrender  in  the  passion  for  athletic  sports, 
for  games  of  chance,  or  for  scientific  research.  In  any  of  these  cases 
a  person,  losing  sight  of  his  original  motive,  may  become  so  ab- 
sorbed in  the  immediate  process  that  what  was  before  the  means 
becomes  an  end  in  itself.  Disinterestedness  is  an  attitude  which  is 
not  limited  to  one  type,  but  which  may  be  developed  in  connection 
with  any  activity. 

5.  Finally,  there  is  the  general  contention  that  intense  gratifica- 
tion of  any  sort  must  point  to  some  preceding  state  of  strife ;  and 
to  this  statement  certain  cases  of  aesthetic  enjoyment  offer  an 
apparent  exception.  How  are  we  to  explain  the  keen  pleasure 
derived  from  scenes  and  colors  which  we  have  made  no  effort  to 
see,  and  which  are  as  much  "given"  as  anything  can  be  to  our 
consciousness  ? 

^^Vorschule  der  Aesthetik,  Vol.  I,  chap.  18. 

^*Origins  of  Art,  p.  19  ;    cf.  also  Groos.  Die  Spiele  der  Mencken,  p.  508. 


ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 


In  view  of  the  above  facts  and  problems,  the  conclusion  seems 
forced  upon  us  that  the  beautiful  and  the  useful,  although  in  no 
sense  identical,  must  yet  be  in  some  very  close  relationship.  To 
return  to  our  previous  formulation,  then,  the  beautiful  may  be  said 
to  be  directed  toward  a  utilitarian  end,  but  not  purposefully  sought 
as  a  means  to  that  end.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  a  gratuitous  con- 
tribution, an  unexpected,  indirect  assistance.  It  is  a  sudden  acces- 
sory in  the  resolution  of  a  struggle.  The  beautiful  differs  from 
the  useful  in  that  it  is  not  the  original  or  essential  stimulus  to  a 
reaction,  but  is  secondary.  It  presupposes  some  practical  —  i.  e,, 
moral  —  crisis,  in  which  the  inadequacy  of  the  stimulus  is  being 
made  up  with  effort.  The  assumption  is  that  the  object  really  could 
be  attained  by  the  painful  exertion,  but  that  by  an  apparent  accident 
it  is  suddenly  made  easy  of  attainment.  This  sudden  increment  in 
the  stimulation,  this  access  of  fresh  power,  is  what  gives  us  that 
sense  of  ease  and  mastery  or  poise  which  is  so  characteristic  of 
aesthetic  enjoyment. 

To  put  this  in  physiological  terms,  let  us  say  that  an  impulse 
a  is  moving  in  the  direction  of  the  object  o,  when  it  is  checked  by 

impulse  h.  The  current  a,  being 
dammed  up,  will  overflow  into  the 
surrounding  area,  or  at  least  back 
up  in  its  own  channel,  seeking  for 
another  outlet;  and  if  there  has 
been  some  past  line  of  discharge 
c  into  o,  the  impulse  may  suddenly 
strike  the  old  trail  and  be  pre- 
cipitated into  0. 

Here  I  should  say  that  the 
facility  of  the  adjustment  would  be 
the  criterion  of  an  aesthetic  situa- 
tion :  if  the  old  habit  were  soon  found  —  i.  e.,  struck  into  by  a  short- 
cut and  followed  down  without  resistance  —  the  experience  would 
be  aesthetic;  but  if  there  were  a  long  delay,  and  the  two  opposing 
lines  of  excitation  were  obliged  to  worry  out  a  new  path,  then  the 
experience  would  be  merely  practical.  The  aesthetic  consciousness 
in  the  former  case  would  depend  for  its  intensity  upon  the  number 
and  the  depth  of  such  by-paths. 

In  illustration  of  such  aesthetic  experience  we  may  cite  the 
following:     In   the   successful   drama   action   becomes   more   con- 


INTRODUCTION  II 

densed  toward  the  end  of  the  play,  and  interest  is  keenest  when  an 
unexpected  denouement  is  brought  out  in  a  quick  succession  of 
varied  events.  Again,  in  Hstening  to  the  performance  of  a  musical 
composition  the  emotional  reaction  is  usually  greatest  when  one 
suddenly  finds  himself  caught  up  and  swept  along  in  the  final  move- 
ment. If  Livingstone,  penetrating  the  African  forests,  had  one 
day  come  upon  a  smooth,  broad  highway,  his  first  apprehension  of 
it  would  have  been  aesthetic.  Alcoholic  stimulation  is  probably  at 
first  distinctly  aesthetic ;  but  when  its  results  are  foreseen  and  used 
for  specific  purposes,  it  becomes  purely  utilitarian.  When  the  runner 
first  learns  his  form,  he  discovers  within  himself  a  host  of  unsus- 
pected allies  —  the  better  adjusted  tread,  the  lift  in  the  chest  and 
arms,  are  a  revelation  to  him ;  then,  as  he  swings  down  the  track, 
the  consciousness  of  all  of  himself  working  together,  which  these 
tributary  forces  give,  is  a  consciousness  of  beauty,  and  his  exultant 
thrill  is  a  pleasure  which  should  be  called  aesthetic.  To  the  person 
whose  daily  routine  does  not  involve  physical  exertion  the  gym- 
nasium offers  as  many  aesthetic  possibilities  as  the  art  gallery  does.^*^ 

^The  formula  given  in  the  preceding  paragraphs  is,  in  some  respects,  very 
like  the  theory  of  beauty  put  forward  by  Guyau ;  in  other  respects  it  differs. 
Guyau  writes  {Les  problemes  de  I'esthetique  contemporaine,  chap.  6,  p.  6i)  : 
"Pour  nous,  nous  croyons  que  toute  sensation  agreable,  quelle  qu'elle  soit,  et 
lorsqu'elle  n'est  pas  par  sa  nature  meme  liee  a  des  associations  repugnantes, 
peut  revetir  un  caractere  esthetique  en  acquerant  un  certain  degre  d'intensite, 
de  retentissement  dans  la  conscience."  And  in  chap.  6,  pp.  72,  73  :  "Si  toute 
sensation  peut  avoir  un  caractere  esthetique,  quand  et  comment  acquiert-elle  ce 
caractere? — C'est  la,  nous  I'avons  deja  dit,  une  simple  affaire  de  degre,  et  il  ne 
faut  pas  demander  des  definitions  du  beau  trop  etroites,  ....  II  faut  dire  aux 
adorateurs  du  beau  ce  que  Diderot  disait  aux  religions  exclusives :  Elargissez 
votre   Dieu. 

"Toute  sensation,  croyons-nous,  passe  ou  peut  passer  par  trois  moments : 
dans  le  premier  I'etre  sentant  constate  en  lui-meme  ce  que  nous  appellerons  avec 
M.  Spencer  un  choc  leger  ou  violent ;  il  distingue  plus  ou  moins  vaguement 
I'intensite  et  la  qualite  specifique  de  Timpression,  mais  rien  de  plus :  .  .  .  .  Dans 
le  second  moment  la  sensation  se  precise  et  prend,  s'il  y  a  lieu,  un  caractere 
clairement  douloureux  ou  agreable  .  .  .  .  il  survient  un  troisieme  moment, 
appele  par  I'ecole  anglaise  la  diffusion  nerveuse:  la  sensation  s'elargissant  comme 
une  onde,  excite  sympathetiquement  tout  le  systeme  nerveux,  eveille  par  association 
ou  suggestion  une  foule  de  sentiments  et  de  pensees  complimentaires,  en  un  mot 
envahit  la  conscience  entiere.  A  cet  instant  la  sensation  ....  tend  a  devenir 
esthetique  ou  antiesthetique.  L'emotion  esthetique  nous  semble  ainsi  consister 
essentiellement  dans  un  elargissement,  dans  une  sorte  de  resonance  de  la  sensation 
a  travers  tout  notre  etre,  surtout  notre  intelligence  et  notre  volonte." 

I    should    agree    entirely    that    any    sense    department    may    furnish    aesthetic 


12  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

One  other  class  of  cases  needs  special  mention  —  the  pleasure 
we  get  from  things  seen  or  heard  when  our  whole  attitude  is  one  of 
dreamful  ease  and  no  special  desire  for  anything  can  be  discovered. 
Such  pleasure,  I  take  it,  is  conditioned  by  the  agreement  of  the 
object  with  the  observer's  mood,  the  mood  standing  for  a  highly 
generalized  desire  (or  for  the  desire  for  a  highly  generalized  object). 
Suppose  that  what  we  desire  is  excitement  of  any  sort  at  all  —  this 
is  a  wish  so  general  as  to  be  no  more  than  a  mood  —  and  we  are 
suddenly  confronted  with  masses  of  light  and  of  brilliant  color,  the 
reaction  would  be  tremendous  simply  because  the  experience  would 
give  unexpected  point  and  definition  to  what  we  had  been  feeling. 

These,  then,  are  the  characteristics  of  aesthetic  experience  — 
that  it  is  unforeseen,  secondary  in  its  use,  and  that  it  is  the  re- 
vival of  old  habits  and  hence  of  emotional  complexes.  Let  us 
see  how  they  agree  with  certain  accepted  observations  on  the 
appreciation  of  the  beautiful.  As  Kant  delivers,  and  many  confirm, 
a  distinctive  mark  of  aesthetic  pleasure  is  its  disinterestedness  or 
detachedness  from  utilitarian  ends ;  it  is  a  thing  apart  and  has  an 
intrinsic  worth.  The  partial  truth  in  this  statement  is  adequately 
recognized  in  the  remark  that  aesthetic  experience  comes  unlooked 
for  and  unsought,  and  aside  from  the  direct  line  of  stimulation.  The 
aesthetic  attitude,  as  contemplative  or  as  presenting  the  absorption 
of  the  subject  in  the  object,  may  be  expressed  as  the  resolution  of 
any  active  striving;  such  absorption  takes  place  at  the  end  of  any 
adjustment  and  is  the  signal  of  its  completion.  The  observation 
that  we  do  not  desire  to  possess  the  thing  which  we  admire  may  be 
answered  by  saying  that  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  object  —  i.  e.,  in 
the  solution  of  our  problem  —  we  are  already  in  full  possession  of  it. 
The  definition  of  Grant  Allen  of  the  beautiful  as  that  which  affords 

experience,  and  that  the  depth  of  aesthetic  emotion  is  to  be  measured  by  the 
amount  of  resonance  or  accompanying  reverberation  ;  but  I  should  still  insist — as 
Guyau  does  not — that  these  associations  must  come  as  unexpected  stimuli.  The 
element  of  novelty  seems  to  me  essential :  an  aesthetic  experience  is  necessarily 
made  up  of  familiar  elements,  but  when  the  combination,  too,  becomes  familiar, 
the  experience  loses  its  aesthetic  character.  This  point  is  expressed  by  Professor 
Warner  Fite  in  the  terms  of  a  theory  of  the  relations  of  "Art,  Industry  and 
Science"  {Psychological  Review,  Vol,  VIII,  p.  143)  :  "So  far  as  the  element  in 
question  is  new,  unexplored  and  uncontrolled,  it  is  an  object  of  esthetic  apprecia- 
tion and  the  demand  for  it  is  an  esthetic  want ;  in  proportion  as  it  comes  under 
our  control  it  becomes  an  organic  need,  an  object  of  industrial  activity  and  a  fact 
of   science." 


INTRODUCTION  1 3 

"the  maximum  of  stimulation  with  the  minimum  of  fatigue  or 
waste,  etc., "  is  something  similar  to  the  formula  of  accessory 
stimulation ;  only  it  does  not  point  out  specifically  how  the  increase 
in  stimulation  may  decrease  the  waste,  nor  does  it  express  the 
'* given"  nature  of  beauty. 

Santayana  contrasts  moral  and  aesthetic  values  in  these  words: 
"  One  .factor  of  this  distinction  is  that  while  aesthetic  judgments  are 
mainly  positive,  that  is,  perceptions  of  good,  moral  judgments  are 
mainly  and  fundamentally  negative,  or  perceptions  of  evil."^^  In 
agreement  with  this  is  the  remark  made  above,  that  the  moral  end 
probably  could  have  been  reached  independently  of  aesthetic  aid,  and 
that  such  assistance  was  to  be  counted  pure  gain,  and  not  merely  the 
eking  out  of  a  deficiency. 

The  appreciation  of  beauty  represents  unity  in  variety,  if  there 
be  some  purpose  as  the  unifying  factor,  which  is  attained  with  the 
assistance  of  various  collateral  pathways,  and  it  consists  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  characteristic  or  expression  in  that  the  original 
instigation  to  action  is  a  stimulus  which  stirs  up  a  complex  of  old 
habits  or  is  a  symbol  which  points  to  a  rich  emotional  context. 
Esthetic  value  is  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  emotional  reference ;  it 
is  a  function  of  the  number  and  intensity  of  these  secondary  excita- 
tions. 

The  logical  view.  —  Logical  inquiry,  which  concerns  itself  with 
descriptions  and  explanations  of  judgment,  inference,  or  reason, 
which  seeks  for  its  object  certainty  and  truth,  and  which  erects 
systems  of  prescriptions  wherewith  to  attain  to  a  correspondence 
between  the  real  and  the  ideal,  must  formulate  value  within  that 
circle  of  categories. 

Speaking  generally,  we  may  say  that  the  function  of  judgment  is 
definition.  In  the  syllogistic  logic  of  Aristotle  the  act  of  judging 
appears  as  the  inclusion  of  an  object  within  a  class  —  an  idea  prob- 
ably derived  from  the  dictum  of  Socrates  and  of  Plato  that  true 
knowledge  is  knowledge  through  concepts  or  knowledge  of  uni- 
versals,  and  an  idea  not  foreign  to  Kant's  definition  of  judgment  as 
"the  faculty  of  thinking  the  particular  as  contained  under  the  uni- 
versal." ^^  According  to  this  conception  we  define  an  object  by  the 
universals  under  which  we  range  it.  Modern  logic,  emphasizing  the 
inductive  aspect  of  the  inferential  act,  points  out  that  the  universal 
is  defined  by  the  objects  which  are  subsumed.    Jevons,  in  perhaps 

^^The  Sense  of  Beauty,  Part  I,  sec.  3.  ^"'Critique  of  Judgment,  IV,  185. 


14  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

the  most  salient  feature  of  his  logic,  expresses  the  act  of  judgment, 
not  as  the  subsumption  of  a  thing  under  a  class,  but  as  the  "sub- 
stitution of  similars."  This  conception,  together  with  Boole's  intro- 
duction into  modern  logic  of  the  quantified  predicate,  makes  us 
regard  the  reasoning  process  as  a  balancing  of  equivalents  or  a  find- 
ing of  identities,  and  gives  to  every  proposition  something  of  the 
character  of  an  equation.  Substitution  suggests  also  the  symbolic 
function  of  the  logical  act.  Keeping  in  mind  Bradley's  ^^  strictures 
upon  Jevons,  that  the  equation,  namely,  is  not  merely  an  identity, 
but  also  an  implication  of  a  difference,  and  that  in  a  substitution  the 
substitute  is  not  simply  identical  with  the  thing  it  displaces  (else, 
why  the  change?),  we  can  see  that  in  the  balancing  of  equivalents 
or  the  substituting  of  similars  there  is  a  real  definition  taking  place. 
For  not  only  is  an  identity  declared  which  subsumes  the  subject 
under  some  class-concept,  but  the  subject  itself  is  a  differentiated 
particular  which  extends  the  realm  of  the  predicated  concept,  so 
that  the  two  sides  of  the  equation,  or  the  subject  and  predicate, 
mutually  define  one  another.  In  naming  definition,  therefore,  as  the 
characteristic  function  of  judgment  we  take  cognizance  of  the  fact 
that  the  subject  of  our  judgment  is  being  delimited,  determined,  or 
defined  by  its  predicates,  not  only  in  the  sense  that  it  is  being  in- 
cluded in  certain  classes,  but  also  in  the  sense  that  it  is  being 
equated  with  the  sum  of  its  predicates. 

The  task  of  logic,  then,  is  to  investigate  the  conditions  of  defini- 
tion or  of  precision.  "  The  postulate  of  logic,"  says  Ueberweg,  is 
"  to  state  explicitly  what  is  thought  implicitly."  ^®  Now,  according 
to  one  point  of  view,  such  a  statement  will  consist  in  the  reduction 
of  phenomena,  or  the  expression  of  experience  in  categories  of 
degree,  quantity,  space,  time.  Number  is  the  criterion  of  exactitude, 
and  measurement  the  ideal  explanation.  Evidence  of  this  fact  is  the 
tendency  of  all  scientific  theory  in  the  direction  of  mathematical 
formulations ;  witness  the  precision  of  physiological  psychology  in 
seeking  to  localize  mental  functions ;  the  attempt  of  atomic  theories 
to  translate  all  qualitative  appearances  into  terms  of  quantity,  i.  e., 
into  spatial  and  temporal  determinations ;  the  criticisms  passed  on 
John  Stuart  Mill  in  ethical  writings  for  his  admission  of  different 
kinds  of  pleasure  into  utilitarian  theory;  the  tendency  to  express 
our  hopes  and  fears  in  the  mathematical  formulae  of  probability  and 

^^Principles  of  Logic,  Book  II,  chap.  4. 
^^System  of  Logic,  Appendix  A,  p.  562. 


INTRODUCTION  1 5 

chance  —  the  amount  that  one  will  wager  is  frequently  considered 
the  most  accurate  gauge  of  his  frame  of  mind  on  a  given  point. 
Things,  indeed,  are  commensurable,  or  comparable  in  the  strictest 
sense,  only  when  they  have  been  reduced  to  a  common  denominator ; 
i.  e.,  when  they  are  the  same  in  kind  and  preserve  only  a  purely 
formal  or  numerical  difference.  Our  goal  is  reached  when  we  can 
apply  a  given  unit  to  every  aspect  of  the  whole,  when  we  have 
found  the  numerical  relationship  of  the  unit  to  the  whole.  The  unit 
is  a  symbol,  and,  whatever  content  we  put  into  it,  we  still  have  a 
determinate  result;  for  the  value  of  the  whole  is  a  function  of 
this  primary  or  unitary  value. 

The  whole  point  of  any  quantitative  statement  lies,  of. course, 
in  its  symbolic  possibilities.  As  was  hinted  above,  values  and  sym- 
bols emerge  simultaneously  within  the  purpose  of  a  facile  manipula- 
tion of  materials.  It  is  only  when  we  wish  to  exchange  or  deal  with 
goods  that  we  consciously  evaluate  them,  and  then  we  translate 
them  into  their  common  denominator  of  money  and  credit  symbols. 
The  emergence  of  value  in  correlation  with  the  development  of 
symbols  is  the  short  cut  whereby  past  experience  is  appropriated 
for  the  guidance  of  future  activity.  The  more  abstracted  the  con- 
cept—  i.  e.,  the  lighter  and  less  cumbrous  the  symbol  —  the  better 
will  be  our  mental  economy ;  i.  e,,  the  more  rational  and  logical  our 
procedure.  The  nearer,  therefore,  that  we  approach  to  a  numerical 
statement  of  phenomena  or  to  the  "pure  form  of  difference,"  the 
closer  we  come  to  a  perfectly  free  and  universal  substitutability  of 
similars. 

According  to  the  numerical  formulation  of  value,  interest  must 
become  purely  extrinsic  and  quantitative  in  character,  value  mean- 
ing amount  —  the  more  the  better.  The  most  ultimate  logical  prob- 
lem was  phrased  by  the  Greeks  as  the  relation  of  the  Many  to  the 
One.  As  I  conceive  it,  the  "  One  "  is  the  thing,  fact,  or  subject  to  be 
valuated,  and  the  "  Many  "  is  the  sum  of  the  parts  or  determinations 
of  the  fact  which  constitute  its  significance  or  meaning.  Each  one  in 
this  many  may  be  the  central  one  which  has  value  only  as  it  implies 
all  the  other  ones,  so  that,  while  the  thing  valuated  is  one,  the  value 
of  it  is  always  in  numbers  —  in  the  many.  Now,  from  such  a  view- 
point as  this,  the  value  sometimes  called  intrinsic  becomes  a  con- 
sideration of  mere  prejudice,  whim,  or  chance,  and  choice  finds  its 
reason  or  ground  wholly  outside  the  object  of  choice.  Thus,  if  the 
necessity  arises  of  choosing  between  two  things  which  are  exactly 


1 6  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

equal  (a  supposition  which  is  possible  only  from  this  mathematical 
standpoint),  there  being  no  ground  for  a  real  preference,  we  should 
say  that  the  outcome  was  blind  or  fortuitous.  But  we  must  remem- 
ber that,  although  there  may  be  no  intrinsic  worth  in  the  one  object 
above  the  other,  yet  there  is  an  intrinsic  necessity  in  the  situation 
for  a  choice  of  some  sort.  Consciousness  must  be  selective  in  order 
to  preserve  its  integrity;  we  must  decide  —  must  make  or  force  a 
choice  for  the  sake  of  having  any  unity,  and  so  any  value  at  all. 
Logically,  then,  the  function  of  choice  is  not  the  selection  of  any 
object  by  reason  of  its  peculiar  character,  but  it  is  rather  the 
actualizing  of  the  relation  of  the  many  in  one :  choice  serves  to  give 
a  locus  for  the  one,  or  to  evolve  the  relation  of  many  in  one  out  of 
a  situation  not  previously  susceptible  of  numerical  expression. 

We  may  illustrate  the  point  by  showing  the  result  of  a  change 
in  emphasis  in  such  a  sentence  as  this:  "The  snow  is  white."  If 
we  regard  the  subject  and  predicate  of  any  proposition  as  having 
the  relation  of  species  and  genus,  then  it  is  apparent  that  what 
takes  place  in  every  act  of  predication  is  an  analysis  of  the  subject 
and  its  classification  under  some  more  comprehensive  category. 
The  subject  is  the  substance  of  our  thought ;  it  is  the  given  matrix ; 
and  the  predicate  is  a  mode  of  conceiving  that  substance;  it  is  a 
conceptual  phase  of  it,  or  a  separation  out  of  an  element  or  attribute. 
By  a  series  of  predications  about  an  object  we  build  up  a  meaning 
for  it,  so  that  finally  the  unanalyzed  lump  called  substance  becomes 
an  articulated  object  stated  in  terms  of  its  functions  and  attributes. 
Let  us  first  say,  now,  that  "  the  snow  is  white/'  Here  the  emphasis 
is  on  the  "white,"  which  is  the  one  attribute  we  are  thinking  about, 
and  the  snow  is  conceived  as  the  subject  or  substance  of  our  judg- 
ment, which  embraces  many  other  attributes.  Suppose,  however, 
that  we  say :  "  The  snow  is  white ; "  we  then  regard  the  snow  as 
one,  as  a  single  thing  among  others  which  are  white ;  but  the  white 
is  now  the  virtual  subject  of  our  reflection;  it  is  a  class  which  in- 
cludes many  members.  Thus,  according  to  our  choice  or  emphasis, 
the  snow  may  be  considered  as  either  the  one  or  the  many. 

The  subjective  appreciation  of  logical  validity  we  call  conviction 
or  certainty,  and  the  process  of  inference  from  this  view-point  is  the 
means  whereby  we  assure  ourselves  of  a  proposed  conclusion.  It 
has  become  common  to  believe  that  conclusions  are  reached,  not  by 
two  different  modes  of  reasoning  —  the  deductive  and  the  inductive 


INTRODUCTION  1 7 

—  but  by  a  single  process  within  which  we  may  distinguish  two  such 
phases.  No  one  could  pretend  that  either  the  deductive  or  the 
inductive  syllogism  is  more  than  an  artificial  and  schematic  expres- 
sion. In  the  deductive  syllogism  we  have  the  major  premise  stand- 
ing first,  but  in  actual  reasoning  we  never  start  in  that  way.  We  do 
not  burst  forth  suddenly  with  general  propositions  and  then  find 
ourselves  confronted  with  some  novel  conclusion.  Our  actual  pro- 
cedure is  literally  a  logical  inquiry;  our  first  question  is:  "What 
is  that?"  which  is  to  ask:  "Under  which  concept  is  this  special 
percept  to  be  mustered  ?  "  Our  next  question  proposes  an  hypothesis : 
"  Can  A  be  Cf"  Can  A  be  conceived  of  as  C  and  substituted  for  it? 
Thus  the  first  step  is  to  formulate  some  conclusion  in  the  inter- 
rogative. The  final  step  is  to  say:  "Yes,  this  is  true,  because  so- 
and-so."  By  virtue  of  some  common  or  mediating  term  we  bridge 
over  our  doubt.  The  value  of  this  logical  conclusion  and  the  mean- 
ing of  the  subjective  feeling  of  certainty  rest  upon  the  office  of  the 
middle  ierm  —  it  mediates  the  conclusion.  In  the  case  of  inductive 
inference,  on  the  other  hand,  we  never  start  with  a  mere  collection 
of  particular  instances ;  there  is  always  something  first  to  suggest 
to  us  to  get  that  special  kind  of  particulars.  These  would  not,  in- 
deed, be  particulars  at  all  unless  we  had  some  purpose  in  collecting 
them,  some  tentative  classification  to  guide  our  selection  of  material. 
So  that  here  again  we  begin  with  an  inquiry  whether  such  and  such 
a  thing  is  true ;  and  our  middle  term  or  mediating  concept  this  time 
is  constituted  by  the  sum  of  all  the  evidences  we  can  amass.  The 
ground  of  our  inference  is  this  array  of  instances. 

Now,  the  sufficiency  of  any  reason,  or  the  adequacy  of  any  ground 
to  give  us  certainty,  is  measured  by  the  degree  of  inward  satisfaction 
which  it  occasions.  As  Sigwart  has  said :  the  criterion  of  objective 
necessity  is  the  inward  feeling  of  certainty.^^  "  Belief  in  the  truth  of 
this  feeling  and  in  its  trustworthiness  is  the  last  anchorage  of  all 
certainty."  The  relation  of  this  feeling  of  certainty  as  the  criterion 
of  validity  and  the  view  which  makes  value  rest  in  numbers  is  just 
this ;  the  feeling  is  the  cumulative  effect  of  the  many  pieces  of  evi- 
dence. In  the  deductive  syllogism  we  may  seem  at  first  sight  to  be 
basing  our  faith  upon  the  force  of  a  single  reflection ;  i.  e.,  the  office 
of  the  middle  term ;  but  we  must  remember  that  our  trust  in  the  con- 
clusion rests  really  upon  the  sureness   of  our  major  and  minor 

premise,  each  of  which  must  have  been  verified  by  many  observations    ^^,^-  o  *  ^  -• 

^^Z  \ 8 " " " y 
"Logic,   Introduction,   p.    15.  /^  or  thf. 

UNIVERSITY 
or 


1 8  OAT  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

in  the  past.  Moreover,  although  we  may  assent  to  a  conclusion  by 
reason  of  only  one  consideration,  yet  it  is  undeniable  that,  if  we  can 
find  other  reasons  for  the  conclusion,  our  certainty  is  thereby  rein- 
forced; and  if  the  issue  is  vital,  we  are  never  loath  to  make  assur- 
ance double  sure.  With  the  inductive  syllogism  we  have  clearly  a 
case  in  which  the  safety  of  the  conclusion  rests  in  the  amount  of  the 
evidence. 

We  have  said  that  the  function  of  judgment  is  definition,  explica- 
tion, or  the  development  of  the  relation  of  the  many  in  one ;  and, 
further,  that  the  subjective  criterion  of  successful  definition  is  cer- 
tainty or  conviction,  and  the  conception  which  completes  the  har- 
mony of  these  two  is  the  objective  necessity  or  truth  of  the  judg- 
ment—  the  correspondence  in  it  of  the  ideal  and  the  real.  In  answer 
to  the  question  as  to  how  we  know  when  we  have  a  correspondence 
of  idea  to  fact,  Ueberweg  says^^  (in  substance)  that  in  "external 
perception"  we  never  can  have  absolute  material  truth,  because  we 
can  only  compare  our  own  conceptions  with  our  own  conceptions, 
and  never  our  conceptions  of  reality  with  reality  itself;  whereas 
in  "  internal  perception,''  or  the  perception  of  our  own  psychical 
states,  we  may  have  absolute  material  truth,  since  we  have  the 
reality  of  these  perceptions  within  ourselves.  This  is  a  distinction, 
however,  which  is  hard  to  maintain;  since  in  the  comparison  of 
psychical  states  we  either  have  two  things  in  consciousness  simul- 
taneously, in  which  case  there  can  be,  properly  speaking,  no  com- 
parison, but  only  an  immediate  awareness  of  something  which  we 
may  later  analyze  into  two  things ;  or  else,  if  the  two  originals  are 
not  present  in  the  mind  at  the  same  time,  one  of  them  must  appear 
as  the  result  (whether  that  be  in  the  form  of  an  image  or  not  we 
need  not  say)  of  past  experience,  the  original  of  which  is  quite  as 
inaccessible  as  any  fact  of  an  external  world.  We  shall,  I  think, 
be  doing  justice  to  Ueberweg's  conception  of  the  remoteness  of 
external  reality  by  saying  that  the  "object"  which  we  are  trying  to 
arrive  at  never  is  given  to  reflection,  but  it  is  the  very  nature  of 
reflective  thought  that  it  is  trying  to  reach  the  object.  This  deter- 
mination of  activity  by  a  purpose  is  the  construction  of  the  object 
or  the  defining  of  the  ideal  until  it  becomes  the  real.  We  know  that 
things  are  true  because  we  make  them  true.  It  is  still  possible,  of 
course,   in  this   functional  view   of  the   judgment   to   express   the 

'^System  of  Logic,  par.  40,  pp.  86,  87. 


INTRODUCTION  19 

attainment  of  the  object  in  equational  form;  i.  e.,  the  real  =  the 
ideal. 

Just  here  it  seems  not  inappropriate  to  draw  a  line  between  the 
mathematical  and  the  properly  logical  statement  of  the  nature  of 
judgment.  In  mathematics,  for  example,  we  may  very  well  say 
that  the  real  is  equal  to  the  ideal,  but  for  consciousness  such  a  con- 
ception would  carry  with  it  the  necessity  for  the  entire  cessation 
of  thought.  I  would  suggest  as  one  criterion  of  difference  between 
logic  and  mathematics  that  the  things  which  we  may  treat  in  mathe- 
matics as  equals  must  be  conceived  of  in  logic  as  merely  equivalents. 
In  mathematics  we  may  have,  and  frequently  must  have,  perfect 
qualitative  identity  with  quantitative  diversity;  but  in  any  science 
which  takes  cognizance  of  the  knowing  subject  we  should  have  to 
face  the  fact  that  a  perfect  qualitative  identity  in  two  modifications 
of  consciousness  is  a  perfect  fusion  into  but  one  modification.  In 
any  activity  whatsoever,  when  we  use  our  symbols,  use  one  thing 
for  another,  we  are  using  things  which  are  "  as  good  as  "  the  others 
for  which  they  stand,  have  equal  effect  or  valence  —  are  equivalents, 
but  never  equals.  To  illustrate  the  two  standpoints  we  may  take 
the  situation  of  seeing  a  dog  run.  Mathematically  expressed: 
"The  dog  is  running;"  or,  "The  dog  z=  one  thing  running." 
There  are  the  dog,  the  running,  and  the  existence  of  the  dog 
running ;  i.  e.,  we  have  the  existence  of  the  situation  expressed  apart 
from  the  differences  in  content.  Logically,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
must  say :  "  The  dog  runs."  We  have  here  a  situation  which,  if 
our  purpose  be  merely  to  name  it,  we  may  call  either  a  dog  or  a 
case  of  running  —  the  two  are  equivalent  for  our  purpose.  In  a 
word,  then,  we  call  things  equal  when  we  think  of  them  as  uncon- 
ditionally identical,  or  the  same  in  themselves;  but  we  call  those 
things  equivalent  which  are  identical  only  for  some  given  purpose. 
Or,  in  the  science  of  consciousness  there  can  be  no  quantitative 
alteration  which  leaves  qualities  wholly  unchanged. 

Our  final  formulation  of  logical  value  is  this  (each  of  these 
statements  implying  the  others)  :  Only  that  modification  of  con- 
sciousness has  much  meaning  which  is  objectively  determined,  which 
in  its  nature  may  approach  a  numerical  precision  of  expression, 
which  is  supported  by  a  mass  of  evidence  or  is  the  nucleus  of  richly 
varied  detail,  and  which  involves  a  feeling  of  conviction. 

It  needs  but  a  few  sentences  to  show  that  the  logical  statement 


20  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

of  value  holds  good  also  in  ethical  theory.  In  ethical  doctrine  the 
characteristic  guise  of  value  is  the  ideal,  the  end,  or  the  Good.  The 
attempts  to  answer  the  question,  "What  constitutes  the  Good?" 
group  themselves  into  two  chief  lines  of  inquiry.  The  extreme 
cases  are,  respectively,  the  view  w^hich  holds  that  the  good  is  the 
pure  content  of  desire,  defined  as  the  sensation  of  pleasure  —  i.  e., 
hedonism;  and  the  view  which  defines  the  good  as  good-will  or 
the  pure  form  of  desire.  Although  hedonism  in  its  cruder  forms 
no  longer  finds  numerous  supporters,  yet  it  survives  in  the  type 
of  theory  which  would  regard  the  connection  between  means  and 
end  as  an  extraneous  relation.  Necessity  (which  rernains  unex- 
plained in  this  theory)  compels  the  use  of  certain  means  to  certain 
ends.  The  means  and  efforts  which  we  must  use  are  entered  on  the 
debit  side  of  the  account;  they  must  be  subtracted  from  the  total 
sum  of  satisfactions.  Inhibition  is  elimination  or  avoidance,  rather 
than  subordination.  The  good  is  exclusive ;  it  takes  in  this  experi- 
ence, but  not  that  one.  We  must,  of  course,  see  a  certain  truth  in 
reckoning  the  labor  and  cost  of  things  as  loss,  but  this  loss  is  essen- 
tial to  our  appreciation  of  gain.  *'  The  light  dove,  piercing  in  her 
easy  flight  the  air  and  perceiving  its  resistance,  imagines  that  flight 
could  be  easier  still  in  empty  space."  ^^ 

The  case  which  emphasizes  the  other  extreme,  that  of  pure  form, 
is  illustrated  by  the  stray  remark  of  Stevenson  —  that  "to  journey 
hopefully  is  better  than  to  arrive."  But  between  these  two  there 
stands  a  type  of  theorist  who  would  say  that  the  distinction  of  means 
and  end  is  a  difference  within  the  good.  The  good  is  the  form  or 
particular  aspect  of  experience  which  is  realized  at  any  moment  by 
the  harmonizing  of  all  the  impulses  of  the  previous  moment.  Prog- 
ress is  a  succession  of  forms,  plans,  or  adjustments,  each  more 
comprehensive  than  the  last.  The  good  is  "the  whole  of  life  in  a 
new  rhythm."  That  conduct  is  right  which  best  unifies  all  our 
impulses,  or  which  brings  the  greatest  number  of  them  into  line; 
that  end  is  good  which  answers  most  completely  our  desire,  or 
which  represents  the  greatest  number  of  them.  Thus  in  hedonism 
we  get  our  unity  in  the  qualitative  homogeneity  of  the  end  and  our 
variety  in  the  concept  of  amount  of  pleasure  or  the  number  of 
pleasures  —  a  mechanical  statement;  and  on  the  rationaHstic  side 
we  find  the  One  in  the  projected  purpose,  and  the  Many  in  the 

^Introduction  to  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason   (Muller's  translation). 


INTRODUCTION  23 

oncerned  with  the  attainment  of  certainty  through  reason  or  judg- 
lent.  There  have  been  those  who  would  say  that  truth  is  the  goal 
Df  the  logician,  but  persuasion  or  conviction  the  aim  of  the  orator 
md  rhetorician.  To  this  we  should  say  that  the  object  of  the  orator 
or  rhetorician  is  not  a  state  of  mind  at  all,  but  is  rather  some  special 
•eaction ;  public  leaders  wish  to  persuade  men  to  do  things,  and 
.vould  be  just  as  well  satisfied  if  that  action  were  a  pure  reflex ;  but 
the  logician  does  aim  to  induce  a  mental  state  of  assurance,  certitude, 
or  the  secure  apprehension  of  a  thing  as  true.  When  we  are  speak- 
ing exactly,  we  do  not  say  that  ''truth  exists,"  but  that  "some 
things  are  true  for  some  people ; "  and  the  object  of  the  reasoner  is 
better  expressed,  not  as  "the  truth,"  but  as  the  attainment  of  cer- 
tainty, or  a  frame  of  mind  which  may  be  described  as  a  felt  satisfac- 
tion in  the  outcome  of  reason.  We  "  rest  assured  "  or  "  feel  con- 
vinced." In  ethics  we  may  say  that  the  "  practice  "  of  virtue  has  as 
its  end  the  building  of  character,  or  the  forming  of  a  characteristic 
or  habitual  reaction  which,  when  perfected,  we  call  conscience.  And, 
in  aesthetics,  the  last  term  in  the  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  is 
the  appeal  to  taste,  the  problem  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness  being 
to  show  how  taste  can  guide  the  particular  appreciation,  and  how 
this,  in  turn,  can  modify  taste.  Thus  the  object  of  discursive  thought 
is  to  attain  to  intuitive  certainty ;  of  moral  effort,  to  secure  the  more 
facile  guidance  of  conscience ;  and  of  attention  to  the  artistic,  to 
enjoy  immediate  and  unreasoned  appreciation.  The  problems  of  the 
normative  sciences  may,  then,  be  generically  formulated  in  the  rela- 
tion of  feeling  to  thought.  Thought  is  the  concept,  on  the  one  hand, 
which  stands  for  judgment,  conduct,  and  appreciation;  and  feeling 
is,  on  the  other,  the  best  expression  for  the  gratifications  of  intuition, 
conscience,  and  taste. 

This  question  of  ultimate  formulation  is  identical  with  the  ques- 
tion of  philosophic  method.  The  application  of  a  philosophic  method 
I  conceive  to  be  this,  that  one  takes  some  general  statement,  ready- 
made  so  to  speak,  or  categorical,  and  uses  it  as  a  mode  of  con- 
ceiving particular  cases,  to  the  end  that  he  may  see  the  particular 
in  new  phases  and  gain  by  this  fitting  on  of  the  concept  some 
suggestions  as  to  the  nature  of  the  particular.  If,  then,  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  statement  of  the  metaphysical  problem  as  a  relation  of 
feeling  to  thought  performs  the  same  function  that  statements  in 
other  categories  do  —  i.  e.,  if  it  presents  our  difficulties  in  an  equally 
suggestive  light  —  then  the  characterization  of  the  universe  as  an 


24  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

interaction  of  thought  and  feehng  may  stand  as  the  expression  of  a 
legitimate  philosophic  method. 

Can  the  ultimate  interpretation  of  experience  be  as  well  formu- 
lated in  categories  of  feeling  and  thought  as  it  has  been  in  other  and 
approved  categories,  like  substance  and  attribute,  possibility  and 
actuality,  nature  and  freedom?  Let  us  first  review  the  significance 
of  what  we  should  now  call  the  physical  concept  of  substance.  In 
early  Greek  speculation,  as  well  as  in  our  common  thought  today, 
the  word  "substance"  calls  up  the  idea  of  extended  matter,  or 
corporeality ;  it  is  that  which  we  see,  feel,  and  lift.  For  the  Greeks 
their  external  objects  had  a  sufficient  ground  of  being  apart  from 
any  subject ;  they  were  there  in  space,  and  the  mind  came  to  know 
them  by  merely  bumping  into  them.  The  idea  was  an  impression 
or  indentation,  so  to  speak,  of  the  real  object  upon  the  mind.  The 
various  attempts  to  introduce  harmony  into  the  conception  of  a 
world  bristling  with  these  independent  substances  finally  culminated 
in  the  method  of  Democritus,  which  said  that  all  objects  were  made 
up  of  atoms  of  the  same  sort,  and  that,  substance  being  a  single 
quality,  all  apparent  differences  were  differences  in  quantity.  The 
atomism  of  Leucippus  and  Democritus  has  practically  held  good,  in 
its  descriptive  outline,  up  to  the  present  day.  The  physical  sciences 
of  our  own  time  state  the  world  as  matter  and  motion ;  the  atom  or 
substance  as  an  exceedingly  minute  particle,  such  that  it  could  never 
become  a  part  of  our  immediate  perceptual  experience ;  and  the 
phenomena  of  the  sensible  world  as  various  dispositions  of  these 
atoms,  or  motions  of  the  substance.  Substance,  as  Locke  puts  it,  is 
the  substratum  or  ground  of  connection  between  the  qualities  of  an 
object.  It  may  be  called  either  the  support  of  these  qualities  or  the 
limit  of  differentiation;  for  the  atom,  defined  as  indivisible,  limits 
the  divisibility  of  matter,  and  so  expresses  the  stopping-place  of 
physical  analysis.  The  conception  of  substance  is  now  recognized 
as  a  methodological  assumption,  as  a  symbol  which  is  useful  in 
stating  certain  facts  about  the  visible,  tangible  substances  of  every- 
day experience.  Just  here  we  may  mention  the  recent  attempts  of 
physicists  to  reduce  matter  itself  to  terms  of  motion.  It  seems 
impossible  to  conceive  the  physical  world  as  a  complex  of  vibrations 
of  different  periods  without  assuming  that  there  is  something  there 
vibrating;  and  if  we  agree  to  this  as' necessary  for  thought,  we 
must  give  the  same  sort  of  reality  to  the  thing  as  to  its  motion. 
These  vibratory  motions  of  the  physicist  are  never  any  more  imme- 


INTRODUCTION  25 

diately  given  in  experience,  are  no  more  descriptive  of  the  actual 
impressions  we  get  of  things,  than  is  the  case  with  the  atoms.  There 
appears  no  reason,  therefore,  why  the  scientist  should  not  either 
grant  to  matter  as  real  an  existence  as  he  does  to  motion,  or  else 
recognize  that  both  matter  and  motion  are,  as  he  conceives  them, 
convenient  symbols,  the  imagery  for  which  comes  from  certain  actual 
experiences  with  gross  masses  and  motions. 

Substance  has  thus  been  viewed  both  as  the  supporter  of  reality 
and  constitution  of  all  things  visible  and  invisible,  and  as  just  a  bit 
of  technical  apparatus  in  a  special  field  of  inquiry.  We  must 
imagine  that  the  connection  between  these  views  is  to  be  explained 
in  some  such  account  as  this.  The  very  first  distinctions  of  sub- 
stance and  attribute,  or  of  the  content  and  its  function,  must  have 
been  for  primitive  man  the  distinction  between  his  own  body  and 
the  operations  of  that  body.  His  data  were  arms  and  legs,  and  his 
problems  specific  muscular  reactions  —  how  to  climb  that  tree,  or  to 
bind  up  his  wounded  hand.  The  anthropomorphism  of  savages,  as 
shown  in  the  physiological  metaphors  by  which  they  explained  or 
expressed  the  natural  forces  about  them,  seem  at  least  to  point  that 
way.  When,  therefore,  early  speculators  became  curious  as  to  the 
world  of  things,  they  tried  to  put  themselves  in  the  place  of  those 
things  and  to  fancy  how  their  own  muscular  equipment  would  go 
to  work  to  accomplish  certain  effects.  This  imaginary  trying  on  of 
a  situation,  or  putting  one's  self  in  the  other's  place,  plays  an  im- 
portant role  in  the  working  out  of  very  many  explanations.  We 
find,  accordingly,  that  in  their  first  crude  thinkings  people  filled  the 
air  alive  with  personal  powers.  Substances  were  individuals,  and 
motions  the  working  of  whim  or  will  instigated  by  love  and  hate. 
Gradually,  however,  there  was  an  awakening  to  the  fact  of  certain 
unswerving  uniformities,  and  a  change  of  interest  took  place  from 
the  agent  whom  it  seemed  unnecessary  to  propitiate  to  the  effects 
or  results  of  the  agency.  The  powers  of  the  air  became  colorless 
and  attenuated,  until  at  length  the  phenomena  which  the  savage 
once  reverenced  as  acts  of  deity  became  powers  subject  to  his  own 
prevision  and  even  control ;  the  external  entity  became  entirely  dis- 
possessed, or  else  merely  a  way  of  labeling  for  himself  certain 
influences  which  he  wielded. 

The  relation  of  substance  to  its  attributes  is  one  which  shifts  as 
scientific  investigation  proceeds,  but  it  is  one  which  can  never  be 


26  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

wholly  done  away  with;  that  is,  neither  of  the  two  terms  can  ever 
be  wholly  translated  into  the  other.  The  concept  of  substance  stands 
for  an  element  in  thought  which  will  always  be  indispensable  to 
thought.  It  is  the  content,  the  symbol,  or  the  non-rational  imagery, 
the  handle  by  which  to  take  hold  and  manipulate  results  or  perform 
functions.  In  a  situation  expressed  as  substance  and  attributes,  sub- 
stance represents  the  unexplored,  indeterminate  part ;  it  stands,  at 
the  outset  of  an  inquiry,  for  our  entire  universe ;  but  as  we  discover 
the  functions  of  our  substance  and  marshal  more  and  more  attributes 
under  it,  there  is  a  change  of  emphasis.  The  content  of  the  original 
experience  becomes  more  and  more  meager,  until  it  lapses  into  insig- 
nificance, becomes  a  merely  unrationalized  point,  so  that,  so  far  as 
any  single  investigation  is  concerned,  substance  is  completely  trans- 
lated into  attributes.  But  we  have  to  remember  that  the  results  of 
one  analysis  become  the  substance  of  the  next,  that  the  victories  of 
yesterday  only  make  matter  for  the  struggle  of  today,  and  that  sub- 
stance is  a  point  of  anchorage  between  two  periods  of  progression 
—  the  residuum  of  unexplored  content. 

If  we  have  £"iven  a  just  estimate  of  the  function  of  the  concept 
"  substance,"  then  it  is  obvious  that  the  meaning  of  substance  and  of 
the  feeling  of  personal  identity  must  be  nearly  related ;  for  the  idea 
of  substance  has  grown  out  of  a  mode  of  thought  —  the  putting  of 
one's  self  in  place  of  the  phenomenon  to  be  explained  —  which  in- 
volves the  notion  of  a  personality  as  the  carrier  or  supporter  of 
values.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  we  can  take  the  modern  psycho- 
logical analysis  of  the  consciousness  of  self  —  as  given  in  James,  for 
example  —  and  see  that  it  reduces  to  a  statement  of  the  presence  of 
certain  tactual,  tendinous,  and  muscular  sensations  which  represent 
the  common  element  or  invariable  accompaniment  of  our  mental 
life  —  the  substratum  or  substantial  part  of  it. 

The  object  of  the  foregoing  remarks  is  to  bring  out  that  the 
consciousness  of  self,  which  is  an  emotion  or  feeling,  answers  to  the 
description  of  substance  as  homogeneous  substratum  of  experience, 
and  that  it  fulfils  the  functions  of  explanation  and  of  the  preserva- 
tion of  problems  quite  as  adequately  as  the  concept  of  the  atom 
does.  Substance  and  feeling  both  stand  for  the  unknown  in  experi- 
ence, for  a  fusion  of  indefinities,  or  for  the  path  of  untried  oppor- 
tunities. If  we  could  imagine  mind  as  having  an  experience  of  pure 
substance,  we  should  have  to  think  of  it  as  a  pure  affection  of  mind 
by  external  fact  —  the  unmediated  excitation  of  the  organism. 


INTRODUCTION  27 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  categories  of  the  possible  and  the  actual. 
In  answer  to  the  question,  as  Royce  puts  it,  "What  is  a  valid  or  a 
determinately  possible  experience  at  the  moment  when  it  is  sup- 
posed to  be  only  possible  ?  "  -*  we  may  say,  briefly,  that  the  possible 
is  an  emotion  as  contrasted  with  thought,  which  is  the  actual.  The 
assertion  that  so  and  so  is  possible  —  that  it  may  or  can  be  —  is  a 
statement  which  is  primarily  concerned  with  both  past  and  future 
time ;  it  is  something  other  than  present  and  actual.  Aristotle  held 
that  the  possible  or  potential  was  an  important  but  inferior  sort  of 
reality ;  that  it  lacked  the  full  validity  of  the  actual.  Kant  gave  it  a 
certain  real  status  when  he  said  that  it  was  the  business  of  science 
to  explore  the  realm  of  possible  experience.  Science  is  a  statement 
of  conditions  of  that  which  can  happen  if  we  essay  it.  In  view  of  a 
given  problem,  let  us  say,  there  are  several  solutions  presented  as 
possible,  but,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  they  are  mutually  exclusive, 
since  the  choice  or  actualization  of  one  means  the  inhibition  of 
others.  Choice  implies  the  existence  of  two  or  more  ways  of  doing 
the  thing ;  but  if  these  ways  exist  at  the  moment  of  choice  and  yet 
are  not  chosen  or  actualized,  what  can  be  said  of  them?  Feeling 
is  the  name  we  have  for  the  undeveloped  realization  of  a  thing; 
emotion  is  the  experience  of  the  fusion  of  many  incipient  reactions 
which  we  call  the  possible  avenues  of  discharge.  Feeling  is  the 
potential,  the  repository  of  undefined,  undetermined  experience,  and 
the  expression  for  the  fact  that  there  are  alternatives  to  the  present 
experience  and  a  chance  for  variation.  It  is  thus  identical  with  the 
unformed  or  homogeneous,  the  blind,  raw  datum,  or  the  stuff  of 
possibilities. 

The  problem  at  issue  in  discussions  of  nature  and  freedom  is 
to  reconcile  the  conceptions  of  mind  as  being  governed  and  as 
governing,  to  explain  the  relation  of  the  given  to  the  achieved.  We 
ask  how  it  is  that  we  go  from  the  natural  or  given,  which  conditions 
us,  to  constructive  thought,  in  which  the  forms  of  the  subject  con- 
dition the  experience.  Is  it  not  the  same  question  if  we  ask  how  to 
get  from  feeling  to  thought?  What  is  this  feeling,  this  dumb 
unrational  presence,  which  is  there  without  explaining  itself,  and 
which  conditions  us  by  compelling  recognition;  and  how  are  we  to 
think  of  it  as  being  appropriated  and  made  over  into  rational  experi- 
ence? When  we  can  answer  this,  we  can  also  say  how  freedom  is 
possible  under  natural  law. 

"* World  and  Individual,  first  series,  p.  260. 


28  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

Suppose,  now,  that  we  were  warranted  in  saying  that  the  formu- 
lation of  the  ultimate  metaphysical  question  in  the  antithesis  of 
thought  and  feeling  does  do  justice  to  the  historical  conceptions 
under  which  metaphysical  speculation  has  flourished,  what  sort  of 
answer  would  that  formulation  suggest?  How  can  feeling  and 
thought,  if  they  stand  for  so  fundamental  a  difference,  ever  get  con- 
nected so  that  they  affect  one  another?  How  can  thought  know 
feeling,  or  how  can  feeling  feel  thought? 

Kant  teaches  that  even  the  objects  of  inner  perception,  our  own 
mental  states  as  presented  to  the  psychologist,  are  merely  phenom- 
enal, and  that  behind  them  are  the  real  mental  objects  to  which  we 
cannot  penetrate.  In  Schopenhauer  the  will  or  motive  element  is 
unconditioned  and  independent  of  the  forms  of  thought;  it  con- 
stitutes by  itself  a  separate  class  of  objects  for  the  subject.^^  Miin- 
sterberg  has  said  in  "Psychological  Atomism "^^  that  feeling  and 
will  cannot  be  in  reality  subject-matter  of  psychology,  because 
they  cannot  take  the  presentational  form,  or  be  submitted  to  the 
laws  of  cognition.  Such  views  are  unavoidably  skeptical  in  their 
bearing ;  they  embody  the  opinion  that  mind  can  never  know  reality 
or  attain  to  material  truth,  because  it  can  compare  only  its  own 
impressions  with  its  own  impressions,  and  never  these  impressions 
with  real  objects.  This  opinion  involves  the  assumption,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  things  which  are  distinct  are  necessarily  separated,  and 
that  different  things  cannot  be  predicated  of  one  another  —  a  view 
which  must  reduce  the  universe  to  an  identical  proposition. 

But  if  feeling  and  thinking  are  related,  what  can  we  say  of  this 
relation  ?  Every  act  may  be  defined  either  as  a  mediation  of  intellect 
between  two  emotional  states,  or  as  the  mediation  of  emotion  be- 
tween two  intellectual  states.  If  we  suppose  a  continuum  of  pure 
reflexes,  we  know  that  a  person  will  never  be  jostled  out  of  uncon- 
sciousness until  there  comes  some  obstacle  interfering  with  a  habit. 
This  interruption  in  the  customary  channels  of  discharge  is  the 
occasion  for  emotion.  The  first  throb  of  consciousness  is  this  felt 
response  which  seems  to  try  all  the  avenues  of  reaction  at  once. 
It  is  a  moment  of  wonder  or  surprise,  connoting  vaguely  some  such 
question  as,  "  What  is  the  matter  ?  "  and  this  mental  content,  which 
Bain  designates  as  a  "  neutral  excitement,"  ^^  we  may  call  undiffer- 

■'^The  Fourfold  Root  of  Principle  of  SuMcient  Reason. 
'^Psychological  Review,  Vol.  VII,  p.   i. 
^''Emotions  and  Will,  Part  I,  chap,  i,  sec.  13. 


INTRODUCTIOKt^^^^^^CK^''  29 

entiated  response  or  the  primitive,  original  emotion.  This  first 
feehng  soon  merges  into  a  consciousness  of  inadequacy  of  some 
special  sort,  and  into  a  desire  for  the  filling  up  of  the  break.  The 
emotion  holds  in  solution,  so  to  speak,  several  possibilities  of  action, 
and  it  is  the  selection  and  development  of  one  of  these  which  con- 
stitutes the  mediation  of  intelligence.  Out  of  the  affective  state  of 
disquiet  there  follows  a  reflective  perception  and  a  projective  con- 
ception. 

In  so  far  as  consciousness  is  held  up  and  bent  back,  it  is  imme- 
diately perceptional ;  it  takes  an  inventory  of  the  situation  and  sees 
what  the  trouble  or  what  the  obstacle  is ;  and  in  so  far  as  it  selects 
from  these  elements  in  the  situation  —  declares  an  identity  of  self 

conception I .  L|- 


h^hit —[^.^^.^''".L^^ 


^'^'     iisqucet 


with  one  of  the  possibilities  of  reaction  —  it  is  projective  and  con- 
ceptional.  This  identification  of  self  with  the  successful  reaction  is 
marked  by  the  feeling  of  agreeableness  or  satisfaction  which  is  the 
final  moment  in  the  adjustment.  There  is,  in  every  activity,  a  re- 
versal of  control  between  feeling  and  thought,  or  stimulus  and 
reaction;  for  in  the  first  moment  of  the  act  we  are  stopped  by  an 
obstacle  of  which  we  must  take  account  —  a  submission  of  the  sub- 
ject to  the  object ;  but  we  then  choose  or  determine,  after  reflection, 
what  the  final  stimulus  shall  be  —  a  conditioning  of  the  object  by  the 
subject.  Thus  we  get  from  one  state  of  feeling  to  another,  from 
the  painful  to  the  pleasant,  through  the  mediation  of  intellect.  It  is 
equally  true,  on  the  other  side,  however,  that  we  cannot  advance 
from  one  intellectual  occupation  to  another  without  the  intervention 
of  feeling.  We  should  be  hopelessly  swamped  in  details  —  could 
never,  in  fact,  escape  from  one  analysis  to  the  next  —  unless  we  had 
some  ability  to  lump  or  fuse  our  past  analyses  into  a  feeling  for 
things,  and,  with  emotion  as  the  carrier  or  symbol  for  whole  trains 
of  ideas,  shake  ourselves  free  for  the  new  object  of  attention.  One 
way,  therefore,  in  which  feeling  and  thought  are  related  is  in  the 
mutual  service  of  means  to  ends. 

Is   there  any   other  way   in   which   emotion   can   be   thought P^^'^'Tp  R  a^>^ 

-^  OF  THF. 

UNIVERSITY 
^       or       ^ 


30  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

Definitions  of  emotion  usually  maintain  that  it  must  be  regarded 
as  the  conscious  concomitant  of  complex  physiological  modifications. 
The  checking  of  an  instinctive  reaction  provokes  a  confusion  of 
tendencies,  and  the  emotion  is  the  fusion  of  these  organic  registra- 
tions or  the  simultaneous  awareness  of  a  manifold  of  organic  move- 
ments. The  essential  point  is  that  of  the  many  motions.  Going  on 
now  to  a  definition  of  movement,  or  motion,  we  should  agree  that  it 
is  to  be  thought  of  in  terms  of  certain  relations  of  space  and  time, 
space  and  time  being  defined  in  their  turn  by  means  of  quantitative 
formulae  or  numerical  symbols.  Thus  thought  may  think  its  Other 
as  a  manifold  —  number  or  pure  difference  being  the  most  abstract 
form  of  thought.  Feeling,  on  the  contrary,  takes  no  account  of  space 
or  time  or  number ;  the  ''  form  "  of  feeling  (unless  that  be  a  contra- 
diction in  terms)  is  pure  quality ;  whatever  is  felt  is  felt  as  a  quality ; 
or  perhaps  it  is  better  to  say  that  whatever  is  felt  is  a  quality.  At 
the  risk  of  seeming  to  set  up  feeling  and  thought  as  things-in- 
themselves,  we  shall  nevertheless  try  to  make  the  above  distinction 
more  explicit.  Feeling  taken  by  itself  is  pure  quality ;  i.  e,,  a  feeling 
is  homogeneous  —  has  na  inner  complexities ;  but  feeling  as  appre- 
hended in  thought  is  a  multitude  of  unique  entities.  We  cannot  say 
just  how  each  one  differs  from  all  the  rest ;  but  for  thought  they  are 
always  feelings,  not  feeling,  and  each  one  seems  to  be  distinctive. 
Thought  in  itself  is  a  complex  or  a  set  of  distinguished  parts ;  but 
thought  as  grasped  by  feeling  is  a  mere  undetermined  sort  of  aware- 
ness or  neutral  excitement.  We  feel  thought  by  means  of  symbols 
which  themselves  are  purely  qualitative. 

What,  finally,  is  the  bearing  of  these  preceding  discussions  on 
the  theory  of  value?  According  to  the  metaphysical  view  of  it, 
thought  has  value  as  it  mediates  feeling,  and  feeling  has  value  as 
it  mediates  thought.  Value  exists  by  virtue  of  the  fact  of  reference. 
A  perfectly  independent  thing  could  have  no  value.  An  identical 
proposition  has  no  internal  value,  because  it  involves  no  substitution, 
no  symbolism,  no  reference ;  it  is  an  equation  with  no  distinction  of 
subject  and  predicate.  The  actual  has  meaning  only  because  of  the 
possibilities  which  it  represents ;  the  present  is  significant  only  be- 
cause of  past  and  future ;  and  possibilities  have  value  only  as  there 
is  an  actuality.  Quality  would  have  no  value  did  it  not  exist  in 
some  quantity,  and  mere  quantity,  without  quality,  is  nothing. 

Summary. —  Summarizing  the  various  accounts  of  value,  we  say 


INTRODUCTION  31 

(i)  in  economics  that  a  commodity  has  worth  when  it  is  much  in 
demand,  but  limited  in  supply.  Value  emerges  when  a  habit  is 
checked,  or  when  want  comes  to  consciousness,  and  is  measured 
by  the  ratio  of  what  is  wanted  divided  by  what  can  be  had.  (2)  In 
logic  the  existence  of  value  depends  upon  the  various  distinctions  of 
thought  and  its  object,  subject  and  predicate,  the  one  and  the  many. 
Thought  is  valid  according  as  it  has  objective  reference;  i.  e.,  the 
idea  is  worth  most  which  becomes  best  realized  in  the  object  of 
thought.  That  subject  is  most  important  of  which  most  things  can 
be  predicated ;  it  has  value  in  proportion  to  the  variety  of  its  deter- 
minations or  connections.  The  One  has  a  value  directly  proportioned 
to  the  Many  from  which  it  is  distinguished.  (3)  In  ethics  the  value 
of  the  end  is  measured  by  the  effort  which  we  will  make  to  attain 
it.  When  we  make  a  choice  we  recognize  that  choosing  one  thing 
means  inhibiting  others,  and  the  value  of  the  good  which  we  choose 
is  measured  by  the  sacrifice  which  it  entails.  Such  sacrifice  is  not, 
of  course,  total  negation;  for  the  moral  end  must  realize  all  the 
impulses  of  the  self;  but  in  this  realization  the  dominant  element 
which  is  chosen  finds  its  significance  in  the  other  tendencies  which 
are  subordmated  to  it.  (4)  in  aesthetics  the  value  of  a  stimulus 
depends  upon  the  number  of  old  habits  which  it  touches  off;  those 
things  are  beautiful  which  have  depth  of  emotional  reference. 

If  we  put  together  these  various  definitions  of  value,  we  may 
say  that  the  one  word  which  best  describes  what  we  mean  by  value  is 
"  agreeableness."  This  term  is  susceptible  of  two  lines  of  interpreta- 
tion, answering  to  the  two  categories  of  feeling  and  thought.  On 
the  one  hand,  agreeableness  is  pure  sensuous  pleasure,  and  the 
measure  of  value  —  if  there  could  be  any  measure  —  the  intensity  of 
this  feeling.  On  the  other  hand,  agreeableness  may  be  supposed 
to  vary  according  to  the  complexity  of  the  valued  content  or  the 
number  of  its  relations.  The  more  complex  and  comprehensive  a 
desire,  the  more  we  value  its  satisfaction.  We  find  in  it  a  greater 
number  of  points  of  agreement  between  our  wish  and  the  reality; 
the  more  complicated  our  activity,  the  more  eventful  is  its  solution, 
and  the  more  varied  the  consequent  gratification. 


THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION   OF   VALUE 

An  intelligible  statement  of  the  psychological  formulation  of 
value  requires  some  preliminary  remark  on  the  psychological  methods 
or  view-points  from  which  it  is  made:  value  is  a  conception  so 
nearly  concerned  with  the  borderlands  of  psychology  that  an  explicit 
summary  of  those  outlines  becomes  desirable.  *'  Methods,"  "  prin- 
ciples," "outlines,"  ''elements,"  ''points  of  view" — all  these  are 
terms  which  upon  scrutiny  seem  to  be  descriptive  of  the  same  group 
of  facts.  A  method,  as  before  said,  is  the  adoption  of  some  very 
general  concept  to  serve  as  the  type  to  which  all  the  particulars 
under  consideration  must,  if  possible,  conform  —  the  guise  under 
which  they  must  all  be  thought.  Any  statement  may  be  regarded 
as  a  psychological  method  which  explicitly  assumes  some  one  fact  as 
ultimate,  and  then  attempts  to  read  all  conscious  processes  in  terms 
of  that  one.  This  is  the  nature  of  any  procedure  upon  hypoth- 
esis, and  the  suggestions  and  satisfactions  which  such  a  perform- 
ance affords  measure  the  efficiency  of  the  method,  the  soundness 
of  the  principle,  the  validity  of  the  point  of  view,  or  the  ultimateness 
of  the  element.  I  believe  that  the  best  index  to  what  ^  psychologist 
really  is  using  as  his  method  is  most  frequently  to  be  found  under  the 
caption  of  "element,"  and  hence  that  current  psychological  method 
can  best  be  got  at  through  a  consideration  of  what  is  meant  by  a 
mental  element.  The  criteria  of  the  mental  element  are  commonly 
given  as  distinctness  and  unanalyzableness ;  but  the  alleged  sim- 
plicity of  elements  does  not  prevent  their  being  frequently  assigned 
the  several  attributes  of  intensity,  extensity,  and  duration.^  Hence 
the  question  might  arise  whether  the  space,  time,  and  degree,  as  the 
forms  under  which  all  mental  content  must  be  conceived,  are  not  the 
real  mental  elements.  Since,  however,  this  view  is  not  subsequently 
developed  in  the  writers  mentioned,  and  since  the  attribute  or  the 
fact  of  quality  is  definitely  assumed  as  fundamental,  as  in  Titchener's 
figure,^  we  may  conclude  that  the  concept  which  they  wish  to 
employ  is  that  of  a  manifold  of  initial  qualities  out  of  which  mind 

^  See   WuNDT,    Outlines   of  Psychology,   p.    30 ;     Titchener,   Outline   p.    29 ; 
Calkins,  Psychology,  chap.  8,  p   105. 
''Outline,   chap.    2,   p.    8. 

32 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  33 

is  compounded.  "  The  total  number  of  elementary  qualities  "  which 
various  experimentalists  have  reckoned  up  is  an  expression  for  them 
of  the  outfit  or  the  resources  of  the  normal  mind,  it  being  presumably 
agreed  that  these  sensations  are  not  to  be  taken  as  given  entities,  but 
as  reflective  abstractions,  and  that  the  concept  of  a  manifold  of 
qualities  is  a  methodological  assumption.  The  logical  consequent 
of  this  view  is  Miinsterberg's  theory  of  psychical  atoms.^  A  psy- 
chical atom,  he  thinks,  never  can  be  given  in  immediate  experience, 
and  is  not  measured  by  time,  space,  and  intensity.  Each  atom  is 
perfectly  unique  and  dissimilar  from  every  other;  for,  he  reasons, 
if  the  atoms  had  any  resemblance  one  to  another,  they  must  of  neces- 
sity be  composed  of  parts  (since  similarity  means  a  partial  identity). 
This  view,  then,  is  really  explicative  of  what  is  contained  in  the 
preceding  one :  quality  as  quality  is  perfectly  unique,  and  a  multitude 
of  such  points  or  existences  is  posited  for  explanatory  purposes. 

The  chief  criticism  against  this  view  as  it  stands  is  that  there  is 
no  warrant  for  calling  this  ultimate  a  manifold.  Pure  quality  is  for 
consciousness  a  homogeneity,  not  a  plurality.  An  atom  cannot  be 
simple  and  at  the  same  time  dissimilar  from  a  great  many  other 
atoms,  for  a  many-sided  dissimilarity  implies  a  highly  differentiated 
organization.  If  we  had  a  thousand  objects  each  different  from 
every  other  in  the  thousand,  then  we  must  have  within  every  one 
of  those  objects  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  grounds  of  distinc- 
tion. Every  added  point  of  difference  is  an  added  point  in  inner 
complexity.  There  is  only  one  absolutely  unique  thing,  and  that  is 
the  universe.  If  we  are  looking  for  a  psychical  atom  pure  and 
simple,  we  must  abstract  from  our  impressions  of  red,  sweet,  soft, 
etc.,  and  find  the  common  element  in  all  of  them ;  but  what  we 
shall  get  is  a  blank,  undifferentiated  experience,  which  could  be 
called  pure  feeling,  pure  being,  or  the  state  of  Nirvana  —  not  a  con- 
geries of  divers  atoms. 

In  this  connection  some  attention  should  be  given  to  the  attempt 
to  classify  conscious  elements  in  the  two  co-ordinate  groups  —  sensa- 
tion and  affection ;  or  even  the  three  —  sensation,  affection,  and 
conation.  When  we  say  that  there  is  a  distinction  between  know- 
ing, feeling,  and  willing,  is  that  any  warrant  for  saying  that  we  mean 
three  co-ordinate  classes  of  elements  waiting  to  be  combined  into 
concrete  experiences?    Indeed,  to  conceive  these  three  mental  states 

^Psychological  Review,  Vol.  VII,  p.  i. 


34  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

as  built  up  analogously,  each  from  its  own  pile  of  material,  is  to  do 
violence  to  all  our  ideas  of  the  nature  of  the  relations  between  these 
states  and  of  their  function  in  the  whole  conscious  economy.  A 
"  sensational  element "  is  no  more  akin  to  thought  than  an  affectional 
or  conative  element  is.  This  division  into  three  co-ordinate  classes 
is,  then,  no  index  to  the  relation  between  thinking,  feeling,  and 
willing;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we  find  any  justification  in  the 
nature  of  the  elements  themselves  for  such  a  division.  As  present 
experience  red  and  blue  are  just  as  different  from  one  another  as  are 
yellow  and  pain.  What  inner  connection  puts  pleasure  and  pain  into 
one  class  and  purple  and  sour  into  another?  In  a  word,  our  experi- 
ence as  elementary  is  not  classified. 

The  view  which  would  make  the  psychical  element  —  or,  as  I 
prefer  to  call  it,  the  psychological  ultimate  —  some  sort  of  homo- 
geneous, qualitative  existence  finds  implicit  support  in  some  of  the 
guesses  which  have  been  made  concerning  the  genesis  of  our  psy- 
chical processes.  James's  conception  of  the  infant's  consciousness 
as  a  blooming,  buzzing  confusion,  which  contains  potentially  all 
future  differentiations ;  Stanley's  position,*  that  primitive  conscious- 
ness is  an  inarticulate  stimulation,  called  for  convenience  pure  pain ; 
Horwicz's  surmise,^  that  the  original  psychic  life  of  children  and 
animals  may  have  been  but  an  oscillation  between  pleasure  and  pain 
—  such  statements  as  these  are  what  might  be  called  consistent 
sensational  theories,  in  which  the  element  is  the  last  point  of  analysis ; 
a  pure  abstraction  conceived,  not  as  a  matter  of  experience,  but  as  a 
principle  of  explanation ;  a  given  something  to  start  with,  out  of 
which  all  later  psychical  manipulations  are  developed.  If,  now,  it  be 
assumed  that  such  a  development  out  of  a  continuum  of  feeling  is 
just  what  takes  place,  not  only  in  passing  from  child-consciousness 
to  adult  consciousness,  but  also  in  every  conscious  act  whatsoever, 
then  we  should  have  a  theory  or  method  which  would  be  the  legiti- 
mate outcome  of  the  assumption  of  sensation  (or  affection)  as 
elementary.  This  theory,  though  not  expressly  subscribed  to  by 
those  who  use  the  idea  of  elemental  sensation,  seems  to  be  the  only 
tenable  formulation  of  their  views.  The  many  sensations  are,  as  we 
said,  posited  for  the  sake  of  explanation;  but  it  seems  possible  to 
make  less  assumption  and  more  explanation  if  we  agree  that,  instead 
of  a  given  manifold,  there  is  one  given  stuff  of  which  we  at  first 

^Philosophical  Review,  Vol.   I,  p.   433. 
^Psychologische  Analysen,  Book  XIV,  p.  351. 


\  P  R  >l' 
or  Tw 

or 

THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  35 

posit  nothing  further ;  but  we  recognize  that  we  shall  later  see  in  it 
the  nucleus  of  all  psychical  modifications.  The  question  of  how  those 
modifications  arise  is  still  untouched,  but  an  activity  drawn  out  of  a 
feeling  continuum  is  certainly  a  no  darker  saying  than  an  activity 
made  by  the  addition  of  parts  together. 

Granting  that  the  assumption  of  feeling  as  the  element,  and  the 
explanation  of  conscious  process  in  terms  of  feeling,  is  a  conceivable 
and  even  defensible  position  in  some  respects,  it  still  seems  possible 
to  find  a  better  one,  some  more  adequate  expression  for  the  funda- 
mental psychical  fact. 

In  order  to  show  the  grounds  upon  which  volition  may  be 
accepted  as  such  a  fact,  let  us  revert  briefly  to  the  status  and  function 
of  metaphysics,  and  to  its  connection  with  psychology.  Metaphysics 
is  essentially  a  question,  not  an  answer ;  it  propounds  the  categories 
which  the  sciences  weave  together  into  systems  of  their  own.  It  is 
quite  thinkable,  therefore,  that  there  should  be  in  some  minds  a 
presumption  always  in  favor  of  a  dualistic  or  a  pluralistic  meta- 
physics, because  such  a  dualism  contains  an  expression  of  doubt,  and 
does  not,  like  some  specious  monisms,  silence  inquiry  where  it  can- 
not answer  questions.  The  function  of  metaphysics  is  to  generalize 
our  questions,  and  its  legitimate  province  is  the  realm  of  suggestion. 
To  the  questions  of  metaphysics  skepticism  says  there  is  no  answer, 
but  the  sciences  postulate  a  point  of  view.  The  only  really  meta- 
physical answer  we  ever  get  is  the  assertion  of  an  unknown  absolute 
which  is  the  solvent  of  all  antitheses.  This,  however,  is  never  what 
we  are  actually  after ;  it  is  not  metaphysical  certainty,  but  practical 
satisfactions,  which  we  work  for ;  and  hence  it  is  to  science,  which  is 
engaged  in  working  out  practical  controls,  that  we  must  look  for 
systematic  and  unified  answers.  In  metaphysics,  for  example,  the 
antithesis  between  thought  and  feeling  presents  involved  situations 
to  which  we  have  only  practical,  non-metaphysical  answers.  How, 
theoretically,  can  pleasure  ever  compensate  for  pain  ?  Schopenhauer 
maintains  that  no  amount  of  pleasure  can  ever  make  up  to  us  for 
having  suffered  pain.  Yet,  practically,  we  do  balance  pleasure  and 
pain,  and  count  one  as  offsetting  the  other.  Again,  what  guarantee 
is  there,  theoretically,  in  even  our  most  ardent  desire  that  we  are 
going  to  get  what  we  want  ?  But,  practically,  we  are  convinced  that 
if  we  only  want  a  thing  badly  enough,  and  try  for  it  hard  enough, 
we  are  sure  to  get  it.    From  one  point  of  view  it  seems  impossible 


36  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

to  Speak  of  self-control ;  for  how  can  anything  either  resist  itself  or 
control  itself?  Constraint  must  come  from  the  outside,  and  experi- 
ence as  a  succession  of  resistances  and  controls  must  be  the  result 
of  two  independent  centers  of  influence.  Yet  we  do  hold  to  the  con- 
ception of  self-regulation.  Metaphysics,  then,  is  an  inquiry,  and 
science  is  a  positive  answer  or  practical  conclusion.  If  metaphysics 
proposes  as  its  basal  antithesis  the  difference  between  thought  and 
feeling,  then  the  answer  to  its  question,  in  metaphysical  language  — 
i.  e.,  the  concept  which  contains  the  two  —  is  something,  pure  being 
perhaps,  which  is  neither  thought  nor  feeling,  and  of  which  we  have 
no  grasp;  but  for  the  science  of  psychology  there  is  a  solution  of 
the  question  in  the  concept  of  will  or  self-control. 

In  favor  of  the  adoption  of  the  activity  concept  as  the  first  datum 
of  psychology  the  following  points  may  be  urged.  In  the  first  place, 
there  is  a  constantly  growing  recognition  of  the  motor  character  of 
all  ideas,  and  the  essentially  purposive  nature  of  every  slightest  con- 
scious experience.  This  tendency  is  apparent  in  statements  which 
declare  that  the  very  existence  of  an  element  depends  upon  a  point 
of  view.  Again,  if  we  assume  that  the  object  of  all  the  sciences  — 
which  is  also  their  limiting  concept  —  is  control  of  one  sort  or 
another  —  as  in  physics  the  object  is  mechanical  explanation  and 
mechanical  control,  or  in  biology  the  object  is  the  explanation  and 
control  of  living  organisms  —  then  how  can  the  object  of  psycho- 
logical science  be  more  fitly  named  than  by  calling  it  self-explanation, 
self-possession,  or  self-control?  This  final  practical  object  of  a 
science  is  just  the  whole  concrete  experience  which  gives  the  founda- 
tion and  warrant  for  the  science  and  is  its  limiting  concept.  We  may 
bring  out  the  relation  between  this  sort  of  an  ultimate  and  our 
ordinary  conception  of  the  element  by  adverting  to  the  criterion  by 
which  such  an  element  is  selected.  It  is  customary  to  speak  of  an 
element  as  that  which  cannot  be  further  analyzed ;  but  if  our  theory 
of  the  analytic-synthetic  character  of  judgment  be  correct,  it  ought 
to  be  quite  as  appropriate  to  say  that  an  element  is  that  which 
cannot  be  further  synthesized;  and  with  this  aspect  of  the  case  in 
mind  the  idea  of  a  concrete  control  or  activity  seems  peculiarly 
suited  to  answer  the  purpose  of  an  ultimate  formula.  If  we  wish  to 
express  the  act  as  the  limit  of  analysis,  we  may  put  it  in  this  way ; 
tKat  this  most  familiar,  tangible,  and  concrete  aspect  of  our  experi- 
ence, the  act,  is  the  very  thing  which  seems  complete  in  itself  and 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  37 

defies  resolution  into  anything  more  final.  Is  not  action  our  most 
ultimate  answer  to  any  situation  or  question?  What  can  we  further 
than  to  do  something  about  it?  The  psychical  element,  then,  can 
justly  be  described  either  as  the  point  where  analysis  ends  and 
synthesis  may  begin,  or  equally  well  also  as  the  point  where  synthe- 
sis ends  and  analysis  may  begin.  It  seems,  therefore,  an  appropriate 
characterization  of  the  element  to  say  that  it  is  the  ultimate  or  funda- 
mental psychical  fact  and  the  chief  explanatory  concept  of  psy- 
chology. For  psychological  theory,  habit  and  attention,  reason  and 
passion,  thought  and  feeling,  will  all  appear  under  the  form  of 
volition  or  as  some  phase  of  self-control. 

A  rough  and  ready  preliminary  statement  of  such  control  may  be 
made  as  follows.  If  we  were  attempting  a  history  of  our  idea  of 
control,  we  should  have  to  recognize  that  self-control,  as  we  now 
think  it,  is  the  product  of  a  long  process  of  civilization.  Government 
has  proceeded  from  the  external  and  highly  despotic  to  the  internal 
and  democratic.  The  savage  chief  ruled  by  virtue  of  his  war-club ; 
but,  although  his  tribe  yielded  him  a  physical  compliance,  their 
obedience  was  relatively  meager,  contingent,  and  irksome;  and  for 
his  part  he  must  have  had  but  little  —  merely  a  momentary  sub- 
jection —  to  enrich  his  feeling  of  governorship  and  control.  In  con- 
trast with  the  primitive  chief  stands  the  president  of  a  democracy, 
who  finds  himself  ruling  through  the  choice  of  those  whom  he  rules. 
His  claims  to  obedience  rest  upon  firm  rational  grounds,  and  he 
feels  himself  a  part  and  an  expression  of  the  internal,  subjective  life 
of  those  about  him.  The  people,  on  their  side,  obey  him  as  naturally 
as  their  own  idea,  and,  far  from  finding  civic  obligations  contingent, 
impertinent,  and  irksome,  they  frequently  feel  them  to  be  richly 
interesting  and  convincing.  There  comes,  thus,  to  be  a  gradual 
internalizing  of  government  and  an  identification  of  the  governing 
with  the  governed.  This  is  just  what  takes  place  in  every  act  of 
our  conscious  adjustments.  When  our  occupation  is  interrupted  by 
some  extraneous  stimulus,  this  disquiet  seems  like  an  absolute  and 
despotic  summons  to  break  with  what  we  are  doing,  and  we  have  to 
yield  to  the  authority  of  the  external  fact.  This  submission  consists 
in  attention  to  the  fact  or  stimulus,  in  tracing  its  lineaments,  copying 
it,  or  conforming  our  minds  to  it  in  a  detailed  way,  until  the  first 
blind  turning  becomes  a  cognition  of  the  situation.  As  this  grap- 
pling of  the  mental  process  or  of  the  subject  with  the  fact  con- 


38  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

tinues,  the  control  of  that  process  or  that  self  undergoes  a  change; 
the  train  of  thought  which  was  interrupted  fades  into  the  back- 
ground, and  this  new  train  of  thought  comes  to  occupy  the  mind  so 
completely  that  the  content  of  the'  self  becomes  identical  with  the 
thing  to  which  it  was  conforming,  and  there  takes  place  an  identifica- 
tion of  the  self  with  the  controlling  factor.  This  reversal  of  the 
situation,  or  regained  ascendancy  of  the  self,  is  the  completed  act 
of  self-control  or  possession.  This  practical  outcome  of  all  activity, 
then,  the  representation  and  redefinition  of  the  stimulus,  which  we 
call  control,  will  be  the  starting-point  and  the  check  upon  our  con- 
siderations of  psychological  method. 

So  general  a  category,  however,  is  not  more  than  a  starting- 
point,  and  we  must  look  for  some  more  special  conceptions  which 
shall  be  both  comprehensive  and  apposite  in  their  presentation  of 
the  facts,  and  at  the  same  time  susceptible  of  this  general  interpre- 
tation. There  are,  in  my  judgment,  four  such  psychological  methods 
in  the  field.  These  four  are  not  mutually  exclusive  or  antagonistic  — 
being  four  presentations  of  the  same  truth  —  nor  need  that  number 
exhaust  the  possible  methods ;  but  in  the  present  outlook  upon  psy- 
chological science  they  seem  pre-eminent.  These  views  each  char- 
acterize in  their  own  way  the  fundamental  aspect  of  the  conscious 
process,  and  according  to  those  characterizations  may  be  named  the 
Volitional,  the  Representational,  the  Discriminative,  and  the  Experi- 
mental. We  shall  go  on,  then,  to  outline  these  four  methods,  and  to 
make  a  statement  of  value  or  meaning  in  the  language  of  each  of 
them. 


I.    MEANING  FROM  THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  OF  ACTIVITY 

In  electing  as  a  psychological  method  the  conception  of  activity, 
we  are  bound,  as  we  said,  to  a  certain  attitude  toward  the  concept. 
We  must  regard  it  as  the  final  word  of  explanation,  as  that  from 
which  as  concrete  and  unrationalized  we  start  out,  and  as  that  to 
which  we  come  back  in  our  most  generalized  statement  —  the  ulti- 
mate being.  We  treat  it  as  that  which,  if  given,  we  can  get  the  rest 
out  of.  All  psychic  phenomena,  then,  must  find  their  order  and 
significance  within  an  act  —  all  conscious  process  being  a  kind  of 
striving.  The  category  of  activity  is  commonly  found  discussed 
under  the  name  of  will,  desire,  attention,  and  conation  or  effort; 
but  belief  in  its  applicability  to  all  forms  of  conscious  life  is  sup- 
ported by  the  fact  that  in  these  discussions  interest  seems  to  focus 
in  the  most  highly  generalized  aspects  of  the  mental  process,  and 
that  the  characteristics  most  dwelt  upon  under  desire,  attention,  and 
so  on,  can  with  reason  be  alleged  of  all  conscious  experience  whatso- 
ever.   This  is  evidenced  in  the  following  cases. 

First  let  it  be  said  that  in  the  contemporary  psychological  treat- 
ment of  activity  there  appears  to  be  a  dawning  uniformity  in  the 
direction  of  identifying  the  problem  of  will  with  the  problem  of 
attention.  Among  those  who  do  this  are  Wundt,  James,  Dewey, 
Kiilpe,  and  Miinsterberg.  The  two  terms,  "  Will  "  and  "  Attention," 
therefore,  will  be  used  interchangeably  to  the  extent  that  citations 
concerning  each  of  them  will  be  considered  relevant  to  the  other. 

I.  The  anticipatory  nature  of  volition,  the  forward  reference  of 
will,  is  one  of  the  facts  which  most  frequently  solicit  notice.  Thus  in 
effort  there  is  always  some  object  ahead,  in  desire  some  image  of  a 
coming  gratification.  Miinsterberg  in  the  Willenshandlung  takes 
"anticipatory  idea"  for  text;  and  James  discusses  attention  in 
terms  of  ideational  accommodations  or  preparatory  excitement  of  the 
centers.  Stout  also  dwells  upon  the  expectant  attitude  in  all  atten- 
tion.® Concerning  the  anticipatory  character  of  consciousness  in 
general  there  is  a  most  explicit  statement  in  Miss  Hitchcock's 
"  Psychology  of  Expectation."  All  consciousness,  she  believes,  is 
tinged  with  expectancy.    It  is  presumed  also  that  the  forward  refer- 

^Manual  of  Psychology,  p.   247. 

39 


40  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

ence  of  conscious  process  (the  anticipatory)  is  even  more  funda- 
mental than  the  backward  reference  (the  memorial),  thus:  "The 
conclusion  is  pressed  upon  us  that  expectation  is  a  more  primitive 
form  of  ideation  than  memory"^  (adding,  however,  that  "a  prece- 
dence of  this  kind  is  limited  only  to  the  lowest  and  most  primitive 
stages  of  consciousness").  Her  concluding  sentence  reads  also: 
"  We  are  thus  justified,  not  only  in  saying  that  all  complete  knowl- 
edge involves  anticipation,  but  also  in  affirming  that  all  rational 
expectation  is  knowledge."  Professor  Royce  is  on  the  verge  of,  if 
not  completely  over  into,  a  similar  position  where  he  says :  "  By 
the  word  '  idea '  ....  I  shall  mean  ....  any  state  of  conscious- 
ness, whether  simple  or  complex,  which,  when  present,  is  then  and 
there  viewed  as  at  least  the  partial  expression  or  embodiment  of  a 
single  conscious  purpose."^  Professor  Dewey's  remark  that  "a 
certain  conceived  state  of  the  self  is  the  object  of  desire  "  *  is  a  sort 
of  corollary  to  the  above  views.  Those  views  say  that  all  conscious- 
ness is  essentially  anticipatory ;  this  view,  that  anticipation  involves 
all  of  consciousness,  that  the  object  of  desire  is  the  whole  self,  and 
that  the  process  of  volition  is  a  completion  of  this  identification: 
"What  the  child  concretely  desires  is  himself  in  possession  of  the 
apple."  ^*^  To  sum  up  in  a  word  the  above  characterizations  of 
mental  process,  we  may  say  that  all  consciousness  is  primarily  pro- 
spective or  anticipatory,  that  it  always  starts  out  face  first. 

2.  A  second  specification  about  desire  (not  very  different  from 
the  first)  may  also  be  predicated  of  consciousness  at  large ;  namely, 
the  fact  of  objective  reference.  On  the  one  hand,  Baldwin  differ- 
entiates desire  from  other  centrally  initiated  process  by  the  reference 
of  the  former  to  a  representation  or  a  pictured  object.^^  "The 
objective  reference  is  what  distinguishes  desire  from  other  centrally 
initiated  reactions.  When  this  outward  tendency  (restlessness)  is 
chained  down  to  a  single  outlet  clearly  pictured  in  consciousness 
we  have  desire."  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  in  Brentano's  prin- 
ciple of  division  among  the  conscious  processes  an  adoption  of  "  ob- 
jective reference  "  as  the  characteristic  of  all  psychic  manifestations. 
It  is  true  that  Brentano  himself  considers  desire  as  merely  one  sort 

''Psychological  Review   (monograph),   January,    1903,   p.    30. 
^World  and  Individual,  first  series,  p.  22. 
^Psychology,  chap.    18,   div.    i,   "Desire,"   p.   362.  ^"Ibid. 

^^Mental  Development,  on  "Sanction  of  Desire,"  pp.  372-92. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  41 

of  reference,  and  does  not  therefore  recognize  its  presence  in  every 
conscious  state,  but  by  dividing  his  data  according  to  the  "  mode  in 
which  consciousness  refers  to  an  object "  he  impHes  that  the  objective 
reference  is  fundamental  to  all. 

3.  Once  more,  in  the  experience  of  effort  we  seem  to  get  the 
inner  kernel  of  the  attentive  process,  the  most  voluntary  part  of 
volition ;  and  yet  it  is  just  these  strains  and  tensions,  this  sense  of 
motor  and  organic  presences,  which  is  the  most  invariable  sub- 
strate of  our  every  psychic  moment.  There  is  no  consciousness, 
however  "passive,"  which  has  not  in  it  some  thread  of  tension, 
some  faint  hovering  sense  of  personality  in  its  awareness.  (Periph- 
eral excitations  there  may  be  and  cortical  vibrations,  or  the  physio- 
logical presence  of  things  which  we  afterward  "  recall "  and  suppose 
that  we  must  have  been  conscious  of;  but  I  cannot  imagine  any 
actual  awareness  which  is  wholly  unaware  of  itself.)  The  same 
psychic  content  appears  in  the  experience  of  self  as  in  the  experience 
of  effort  —  reduced  by  some  writers  to  strains  in  the  chest,  head  and 
neck.  To  borrow  from  James's  phrases,  the  effort  we  make  seems 
to  be  a  thing  peculiarly  our  own,  and  in  the  dull  heave  of  the  will  it 
is  ourselves  which  we  seem  to  be  throwing  into  the  scale.  This  per- 
sonal tang  and  sense  of  effort  —  they  may  be  ever  so  vague  and 
unobtrusive  —  are  discernible  in  all  mental  states. 

In  the  opinions  thus  far  cited  there  appears  to  be  possible  an 
agreement  with  the  conception  of  activity  as  a  method ;  that  is,  these 
views,  without  explicitly  adopting  it,  lend  themselves  to  such  an 
amplification.  There  are  not  wanting,  however,  theories  which 
definitely  support  this  view.  In  the  ethics  of  Aristotle  the  moral 
act  is  designated  as  the  mean  between  excess  and  defect  —  the 
excellence,  the  idea  or  the  characteristic  of  a  man  being  the  fulfilment 
of  all  his  abilities.  Activity  (in  this  case  called  moral  activity),  con- 
ceived as  the  mean,  involves  the  conception  of  the  functioning  of 
all  the  limits ;  i.  e.,  the  middle  course  is  an  expression  of  both 
extremes,  and  the  conscious  phenomenon  which  is  the  mean  involves 
the  arrangement  of  all  the  other  aspects  of  consciousness.  In  con- 
temporary thought  the  essentially  active  nature  of  consciousness  is 
voiced  in  that  whole  point  of  view  which  regards  mind  as  developed 
out  of  the  response  of  the  organism  to  critical  situations,  and  which 
points  out  the  essential  significance  of  mind  in  the  adaptive  or  ad- 
justive  function  whereby  it  enables  the  organism  with  which  it  is 


42  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

associated  to  maintain  itself  in  face  of  its  environment.  Apart  from 
certain  implications  contained  in  this  statement  relative  to  the  con- 
nection between  mind  and  body,  it  is  a  good  expression  of  the  thought 
that  every  minor  process  finds  its  value  within  some  larger  purpose, 
until  even  consciousness  itself  as  a  whole  finds  its  significance  in 
being  the  means  to  a  purpose  beyond  itself.  According  to  Wundt, 
apperception,  the  sole  original  act  of  will,  is  the  indispensable  factor 
in  all  intellectual  and  affective  differentiation.  In  the  following  pas- 
sages ^^  he  seems  to  elevate  activity  to  what  we  have  described  as  the 
position  of  a  method : 

Feelings  are  parts  of  emotions  and  emotions   are  to  be  considered  as 

components  of  volitional  processes All  these  affective  processes  may, 

accordingly,  be  subsumed  under  the  general  concept  volitional  process. 

Also  this : 

Thus,  volition  proves  to  be  the  fundamental  fact  from  which  all  those 
processes  arise  which  are  made  up  of  feelings.  Then,  too,  in  the  process  of 
apperception^  which  is  found  through  psychological  analysis  to  have  all  the 
characteristics  of  a  volitional  act,  we  have  a  direct  relation  between  this 
fundamental  fact  and  the  ideational  contents  of  experience  which  arise  from 
the  spatial  arrangements  of  sensations.  Now,  volitional  processes  are  appre- 
hended as  unitary  processes  and  as  being  uniform  in  character  in  the  midst 
of  all  the  variations  in  their  components,  etc. 

Pre-eminently  identified  with  the  activity  theory  stands  Pro- 
fessor Dewey  in  the  conception  of  will  as  the  mediation  of  impulse, 
and  as  the  co-ordinative  or  unifying  aspect  of  all  conscious  dis- 
tinctions whatsoever.^^ 

Believing  that  activity  and  desire  are  characteristic  of  all  con- 
scious phenomena,  and  that  all  desires  as  such  are  operative  in  much 
the  same  manner,  we  should  then  look  for  our  first  classifications  in 
some  general  ground  of  cleavage  running  through  the  contents  or 
objects  of  desire.  In  looking  from  the  outside  at  the  fulfilment  of 
some  intricate  purpose,  it  becomes  at  once  apparent  that  the  object 
of  endeavor  is  a  thing  which  shifts  from  moment  to  moment  within 
that  purpose ;  each  item  of  the  elaboration  becomes  itself  for  a  space 
the  object  of  desire,  so  that  a  cross-section  of  such  an  activity  would 
display  differences  in  these  "substantive"  states  according  to  the 

^^Outlines  of  Psychology,  sees.   15,   10,  and   11. 

^'See  especially  Syllabus  of  Ethics,  sec.  xii ;  "Theory  of  Emotion,"  Psycho- 
logical Review,  Vol.  I,  p.  553  ;  Vol.  II,  p.  13  ;  and  "The  Reflex  Arc  Concept," 
ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  357. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE 


43 


level  at  which  it  was  made.  The  greatest  difference,  or  at  least 
the  most  highly  generalized  distinction,  among  the  objects  of  desire 
is  the  difference  between  stimulation  and  pacification.  We  desire 
in  general,  that  is  to  say,  either  to  be  stimulated  or  to  escape  from 
stimulation.  Another  way  of  putting  it  is  to  say  that  it  is  a  difference 
between  greatest  and  least  excitation.  If  we  might  picture  a  con- 
scious adjustment  as  a  weaving  together  or  merging  of  independent 
strands,  then  we  could  say  that  the  cross-section  which  exhibited  the 
greatest  number  of  independently  grasped  threads  —  i,  e.,  the  point 
of  maximum  distinction  —  was  also  the  point  of  highest  stimulation ; 
or,  again,  that  stimulation  was  the  consciousness  of  the  material, 
and  pacification  the  consciousness  of  coalescence.  The  widest  di- 
vergence in  the  psychic  level  is  the  difference  between  the  crest  and 
the  trough  of  the  wave,  the  maximum  of  excitement  and  the  com- 
pletion of  allayment.  The  relation  of  the  two  kinds  of  desire  within 
a  single  act  will  be  apparent  in  a  reconsideration  of  the  account 
given  above.  Following  upon  the  emotion  of  surprise  occasioned 
by  the  injection  of  an  obstacle  —  a  clash  of  habits  —  we  have  a- 
reflective-perceptive  state  of  mind  in  which  we  have  spread  out 
before  us  all  the  elements  in  the  situation.  These  are  then  eventually 
gathered  up  and  put  away  in  our  choice  or  reaction. 


obst 


dcle 


In  the  diagram  the  object  of  a  is  the  cross-section  at  b,  the  maxi- 
mum of  distinction,  and  the  object  of  h  is  the  point  c,  or  perfect 
pacification.  It  is  common  enough  to  observe  that  every  act  in  its 
very  nature  aims  at  its  own  cessation^  strives  to  accomplish  its  own 
end ;  but  it  is  equally  obvious  that  every  act  in  its  inception  registers 
a  preliminary  desire  for  a  heightened  stimulation.  The  rational 
ground  for  such  a  desire  would  be  the  fact  that  in  cases  of  inter- 


44  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

rupted  habit  some  additional  shove  is  necessary  to  the  final  discharge 
of  the  motor  apparatus.  When  the  first  surprise  comes  to  us,  we 
literally  "  want  to  know  "  what  the  difficulty  is ;  we  wish  a  developed 
and  detailed  excitation  instead  of  the  elementary,  inarticulate  one. 
The  desire  for  excitement  is  the  desire  for  the  auxiliary  means 
which  will  precipitate  the  act.  Much  of  our  aimless  craving  for 
excitement  and  the  pleasure  which  we  often  find  in  mere  stimulation 
as  such,  is  really  a  craving  for  and  a  pleasure  in  the  idea  of  our 
own  heightened  efi:ectiveness,  is  a  desire  to  feel  that  we  can  do  some- 
thing. Within  a  given  activity,  then,  we  find  things  which  please  by 
reason  of  their  exciting  qualities,  and  because  they  are  consonant 
with  the  high  tide  of  the  active  pursuit,  and  things  which  please  in 
their  soothing  character  because  they  are  contributory  or  agreeable 
to  the  conclusion  of  the  act. 

The  practical  pertinency  of  the  above  division  of  desires  is  illus- 
trated in  the  following  particulars.  "  Writers  upon  color,  decoration, 
ornamentation,"  says  Titchener,  "recognize  two  types  of  color 
scheme:  the  dominant  and  the  contrasted;"^*  and  this  is  descrip- 
tive of  a  difference  which  can  be  observed  in  other  circumstances  of 
enjoyment.  We  take  a  pleasure  in  the  contrast  of  stimuli,  which 
gives  a  certain  vivacity,  spirit,  or  brilliancy  to  the  experience,  and 
pleasure  in  the  easy  blending  of  stimuli,  which  affords  an  alluring 
sense  of  smoothness.  Again,  the  rhythms  or  periods  which  invade 
our  every  occupation  from  the  least  to  the  greatest  are  a  further 
index  to  the  same  fact  that  what  we  need  and  what  we  strive  for  is 
now  motion  or  strain  and  now  rest. 

The  intimate  nature  of  will  —  will  in  the  narrowest  sense,  or 
activity  most  active  —  is  conceded  to  manifest  itself  in  the  experience 
of  effort.  Indeed,  an  analysis  of  effort  seems  to  promise  for  psy- 
chological method  a  description  of  the  most  typical  and  the  most 
schematic  case  of  self-control.  Although,  as  we  said  above,  effort 
is,  strictly  speaking,  coextensive  with  consciousness  and  with  desire, 
yet  we  shall  choose  to  regard  it  as  more  manifest  in  the  desire  for 
stimulation  than  in  the  complementary  desire  for  pacification. 
Effort,  that  is,  is  most  apparent  in  just  that  point  in  a  conscious  ad- 
justment where  conflict  is  at  its  height  and  most  distressful,  and 
where  characteristic  muscular*  and  organic  reactions  are  most  dis- 
tinctly present.    An  experience  of  effort,  such  as  the  case  of  extreme 

^*Outline  of  Psychology,  chap.   13,   sec.  88. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  45 

physical  exertion  would  illustrate,  gives  us  the  following  situation: 
first  there  is  a  consciousness  of  incoming  sensations  from  the 
motor  apparatus  directly  relevant  to  the  proposed  reaction;  and 
then,  as  with  continued  resistance  a  bigger  levy  is  laid  on  the  organ- 
ism, there  come  pouring  in  sensations  from  the  whole  executive 
mechanism,  so  that,  whereas  a  well-practiced  reaction  is  run  off  with 
facility  and  precision,  the  difficult  adjustment  is  accomplished  with 
pain,  and  accompanied  by  many  superfluous  irrelevant  movements. 
Following  Titchener's  analysis,^**  we  should  agree  that  the  conscious- 
ness of  self  as  most  intimately  active  —  the  experience  of  effectua- 
tion—  reduces  to  just  these  terms  of  muscle,  joint,  and  tendon  sensa- 
tions. A  piece  of  confirmatory  evidence  for  this  position  appears  in 
a  rather  curious  sort  of  experience  which  some  persons  have  ob- 
served in  themselves.  Thinking  of  something  wholly  removed  from 
his  present  physical  condition,  one  may  suddenly  become  aware  of 
the  involuntary  twitching  of  some  muscle  or  group  of  muscles 
ordinarily  within  his  control.  The  twitching  certainly  has  not  been 
anticipated  and  perhaps  cannot  be  stopped  at  will,  but  all  at  once 
that  movement  may  seem  to  the  person  to  be  his  very  own,  may 
take  on  all  the  warmth  and  closeness  of  his  most  personally  directed 
action,  feel  exactly  like  the  expression  of  his  own  voluntary  com- 
mand. He  may  exclaim  to  himself :  "  Why,  Fm  doing  this."  The 
same  thing  has  been  remarked  in  the  case  of  some  movements 
which  can  be  electrically  stimulated.  The  conclusion  to  be  drawn 
is  that  the  mere  awareness  of  movement  is  in  some  cases  equivalent 
to  the  fullest  consciousness  of  effectuation. 

An  explanation  of  the  experience  of  effort  or  conation  has  first 
of  all  these  two  questions  to  answer:  What  is  the  rational  basis 
of  the  desire  for  stimulation?  and,  What  is  the  special  significance 
of  the  various  sensations,  muscular,  tendinous,  organic,  and  so  on, 
which  distinguish  the  experience?  In  answer  to  the  first  question 
we  should  begin  by  saying  that  in  effort  we  come  to  the  most 
poignant  consciousness  which  we  ever  have  of  the  meaning  of  causal 
connection ;  we  realize  then  most  vividly  that  one  thing  is  essential 
to  another,  that  in  order  to  do  one  thing  we  must  do  this  other. 
The  appreciation  of  means  as  such  is  very  distinct.  Will  is  an 
appreciation  of  this  fact  of  prerequisition.  To  explain  this  further, 
we   may  describe  will  as   involving  always   a  certain   reversal   of 

^Ibid.,  sec.  36. 


46  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

brain  processes.  In  the  idea  of  the  anticipatory  nature  of  action  we 
have  implied  the  secondary  character  of  all  voluntary  movement; 
i.  e.,  no  movement  can  be  made  voluntarily  which  has  not,  at  some 
previous  time,  been  made  involuntarily.  We  may,  therefore,  say 
that  will  (and,  indeed,  all  intellection)  depends,  on  the  neural  side, 
upon  the  reversibility  of  the  processes  of  association.  Suppose  that 
some  movement  produces  regularly  some  result  —  that  there  is  a 
current  which  passes  from  a  to  h.  Now,  if  this  current  is  never 
checked  back  in  its  course,  but  continues  to  travel  the  same  road  in 
the  same  direction,  we  should  never  take  any  cognizance  of  the 
connection  between  a  and  h;  but  the  emergence  of  the  case  into 
consciousness  depends  upon  the  stimulation  of  the  h  end  of  the 
line  first,  and  the  subsequent  filling  in  of  the  a  end ;  i.  e.,  upon  there 
being  first  a  vague  consciousness  of  the  result,  and  then  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  execution,  or  the  attempted  execution,  of  the  move- 
ment. Unless  a  current  can  flow  or  press  backward  to  some  extent 
in  its  path  —  unless,  in  other  words,  it  can  open  up  the  road  and 
help  from  in  front,  and  not  merely  push  along  from  behind  —  we 
shall  get  no  conscious  notice  in  the  situation.  (The  condition  of 
such  a  stimulation  from  the  b  end  is  plainly  the  interference  in  the 
habitual  mechanism  of  some  second  impulse  —  a  conflict  of  habits.) 
Our  object  in  the  conscious  struggle  is,  therefore,  to  fill  in  the 
intermediate  steps  between  our  present  status  and  the  limit  set  by 
this  interruption  of  habit,  to  get  the  a  end  of  the  process  sufficiently 
active  so  that  the  motor  discharge  can  take  place  in  the  proper 
direction.  In  psychical  terms,  our  effort  is  directed  toward  the 
development  of  the  stimulus.  Gaining  control  over  a  situation  or  an 
object  consists  in  arranging  an  articulate  scheme  of  stimuli  which 
will  touch  off  the  discharge  into  that  object.  Consciousness  in  this 
way  absorbs,  we  might  say,  the  function  of  the  environment.  The 
inadequacy  of  the  original  shove  is  mirrored  in  consciousness  by 
the  evolution  of  the  series  of  ideational  contents ;  for  in  the  new 
adjustment  we  must  link  together  various  partial  reactions,  and 
each  one  of  these  hitherto  mutually  independent  bits  of  mechanism 
has  to  have  its  own  cue  in  consciousness.  Planning  for  a  future 
event,  then,  is  a  setting  up  of  some  system  of  cues,  and  the  voluntary 
act  is,  so  to  speak,  a  "put-up  job"  on  the  physical  organism.  It  is, 
then,  the  prerequisite  or  the  preliminary  stimulation  which  we  are 
practically  striving  for ;  in  our  search  for  happiness  what  we  actually 
work  for  is  not  happiness,  but  the  things  which  bring  happiness. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  47 

That  is  what  we  mean  in  saying  that  in  effort  we  have  a  desire  for 
more  stimulation. 

Ordinarily  we  say  in  cases  where  the  struggle  has  not  become 
extreme  that  this  desire  is  a  striving  for  more  stimulation  of  a  par- 
ticular kind ;  but  I  think  that  in  cases  of  extreme  effort  it  also  comes 
out  clearly  that  a  desire  emerges  for  more  excitation  of  any  kind 
whatsoever.  Not  only  is  irritation  of  the  motor  tracts  proper  to 
the  attainment  of  the  object  called  for,  but  irritation  of  any  and 
every  executive  in  the  body.  Introspectively,  we  seem  in  the  case 
of  desperate  effort  to  be  trying  to  throw  our  whole  selves  into  the 
performance  of  the  act  in  question.  On  the  physiological  side  this 
tendency  would  mean  a  heightening  of  the  general  cortical  irritabil- 
ity, and  a  pervasive  excitement  of  the  whole  organism.  Whether  or 
not  we  could  be  justified  in  holding  that  such  general  excitation 
could  be  translated  or  appropriated  to  some  slight  degree  into  a 
special  excitation  —  i.  e.,  whether  it  could  drain  off  in  any  sense  from 
the  whole  cortex  into  this  specially  excited  path  —  is  still  a  question. 
But  it  does  seem  plausible  to  say  that  this  general  irritability  tends 
to  shake  loose  any  latent  capacity  already  present  in  the  special  motor 
tract  under  discussion.  In  other  words,  stimulation  at  large  may 
conceivably  add  some  drop  of  effectiveness  to  the  special  reaction. 
In  support  of  this  view,  or  at  least  as  lending  themselves  to  this 
interpretation,  we  may  cite: 

a)  The  analogous  explanation  in  cases  of  sense-perception ;  i.  e., 
in  the  experiment  with  a  tuning-fork  and  a  subliminal  color  stimulus  ; 
when  the  fork  is  struck  the  color  flashes  into  consciousness,  and 
this  result  is  accounted  for  on  the  ground  that  the  sound  stimulus 
raises  the  general  cortical  excitability. 

h)  The  therapeutic  value  of  great  excitement,  apparently  of  any 
kind  whatsoever ;  even  a  painful  shock,  in  certain  cases  of  insanity. 

c)  The  fact  that  athletes  always  take  occasion  to  work  up  their 
general  explosiveness  before  they  attempt  any  special  feat. 

d)  The  craving  for  any  kind  of  excitement  which  takes  hold  of 
a  person  when  he  has  undertaken  some  work  too  big  for  him. 

According  to  this  view,  then,  the  presence  of  irrelevant  move- 
ments and  organic  disturbances  is  the  record  of  our  attempt  to 
touch  off  all  the  motor  cues  in  our  power,  or  to  put  our  whole  selves 
into  the  solution  of  our  problem.  It  indicates  that,  as  plan  after 
plan  of  action  has  failed  and  every  effort  been  baffled,  our  reaction 
finds  itself  on  the  road  to  become  a  mere  futile  emotional  convulsion. 


48  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

The  maximum  of  stimulation  is  reached  in  that  act  which  is  hard 
enough  to  stir  our  best  effort,  and  yet  not  so  hard  that  it  balks  every 
special  attempt  at  its  accomplishment  until  the  current,  dammed 
back,  becomes  degenerated  and  diffused  in  mere  general  irritation. 
In  looking  about  for  the  particular  expression  which  the  lan- 
guage of  effort  gives  to  our  conception  of  value,  we  naturally  enough 
take  to  the  term  "  meaning,"  in  the  sense  of  intention,  as  embodying 
or  standing  for  that  prospective  stimulation  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking.  The  thing  which  we  strive  toward,  our  proposal  or  plan, 
that  which  we  mean  —  in  a  word,  our  intent  —  is  the  exponent  of  our 
values.  That  act  is  felt  as  most  important  which,  in  the  furtherance 
of  a  single  purpose,  necessarily  points  forward  to  the  richest  com- 
plex of  ideational  processes  or  the  greatest  number  of  points  of 
stimulation.  The  meaning  of  a  conscious  process  is  measured  by  the 
elaboration  of  the  intention  or  the  proposed  system  of  stimuli  which 
it  embodies.  That  life  is  most  worth  while  which  has  the  greatest 
investment  in  future  interests,  and  which  has  for  its  object  an 
amply  diversified  program. 


II.    MEANING  IN  TERMS  OF  DISCRIMINATION 

In  contrast  with  the  voluntaristic  method  just  discussed,  we  may 
call  the  method  next  to  be  considered  one  sort  of  intellectualistic 
conception  —  the  sort  which  pronounces  the  discriminative-asso- 
ciative character  of  thought  to  be  its  most  ultimate  aspect.  This 
method,  the  outcome  of  the  old  associationism,  finds  ample  indorse- 
ment also  in  more  recent  theory.    Bain : 

The  primary,  or  fundamental  attributes  of  Thought,  or  Intelligence,  have 
been  already  stated  to  be,  Consciousness  of  Difference,  Consciousness  of 
Agreement^  and  Retentiveness. 

Also: 

The  first  and  most  fundamental  property  is  the  Consciousness  of  Differ- 
ence or  Discrimination.  To  be  distinctly  affected  by  two  or  more  successive 
impressions  is  the  most  general  fact  of  consciousness.  We  are  never  con- 
scious at  all  without  experiencing  transition  or  change.  (This  has  been 
called  the  law  of  Relativity.)" 

Sully: 

This  discernment  of  difference  is  the  most  fundamental  and  constant 
element  in  all  intellection.     It  is  known  as  Discrimination." 

Spencer : 

From  the  most  complex  and  most  abstract  inferences  down  to  the  most 
rudimentary  intuitions  all  intelligence  proceeds  by  the  establishment  of 
relations  of  likeness  and  unlikeness}^ 

The  relation  of  unlikeness  is  the  primordial  one — is  the  relation  involved 
in  every  other  relation;  and  can  itself  be  described  in  no  other  way  than 
as  a  change  in  consciousness." 

The  ultimate  relation,  therefore,  is  nothing  more  than  a  change  in  the 
state  of  consciousness ;  and  we  call  it  either  a  relation  if  unlikeness  or  a 
relation  of  sequence  according  as  we  think  of  the  contrast  [distrimination]. 
between  the  antecedent  and  consequent  states,  or  of  their  order  [association]." 

Ward  says : 

Of  the  very  beginning  of  this  continuum  [i.  e.,  the  field  of  consciousness] 
'^'^The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  3d  ed.,  p.   321. 
'^''The  Human  Mind,  Vol.  I,  chap.  4,  sec.  3,  p.  62. 
^^Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  chap.  24,  sec.  371. 
^Vbid.,  sec.   373.  ^Ibid.,  chap.  25,  sec.  374. 

49 


50  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

we  can  say  nothing;  absolute  beginnings  are  beyond  the  pale  of  science. 
Actual  presentation  consists  in  the  continuum  being  differentiated;  and 
every  differentiation  constitutes  a  new  presentation.  Hence  the  common- 
place of  psychologists:  We  are  only  conscious  as  we  are  conscious  of 
change.^ 

Concerning  what  takes  place  in  the  process  of  discrimination 
most  writers  have  been  content  to  say  that  there  is  an  analysis 
or  singling  out  of  parts  in  a  whole:  discrimination,  which  is  used 
as  synonymous  with  comparison  and  is  understood  to  imply  its 
complementary  aspect  association,  is  said  to  be  a  discernment  of 
likeness  and  difference,  a  detection  of  variety  in  unity  and  unity  in 
variety.  There  have,  however,  been  attempts  to  treat  this  elementary 
process  in  a  more  elaborate  way.  Sully,  for  example,  tries  to  separate 
discrimination  from  differentiation  in  this  way:  He  sets  down 
differentiation  as  the  preparatory  stage  to  discrimination,  and  would 
have  us  suppose  that  in  the  merely  differentiated  phase  certain  ele- 
ments have  somehow  shouldered  themselves  up  into  consciousness 
and  are  waiting  to  be  known  as  different.    He  says : 

A  and  B  must  be  presented  and  noted  as  two  distinct  impressions  before 
we  become  conscious  of  the  relation  A — B.  [And  in  the  footnote:]  This 
applies  to  all  intellection  as  a  relational  and  relating  process.  The  mental 
apprehension  of  a  relation  of  difference,  likeness,  or  succession  in  time  must 
be  carefully  distinguished  from  the  experience  of  having  two  unlike,  like  or 
successive  impressions.^^ 

The  same  thought  appears  in  Wundt: 

The  erroneous  view  still  finds  frequent  acceptance  that  the  existence  of 
psychical  elements  and  compounds  is  the  same  as  their  apperceptive  com- 
parison. The  two  are  to  be  held  completely  apart.  Of  course,  there  must  be 
agreements  and  differences  in  our  psychical  processes  themselves,  or  we  could 
not  perceive  them;  still  the  comparing  activity  by  which  we  perceive  is 
different  from  the  agreements  and  differences  themselves,  and  additional  to 
them.=^ 

I  am  inclined  to  add  one  more  acceptance  to  the  "erroneous  view." 
Surely  in  psychology,  if  anywhere,  the  "being"  of  a  thing  is  its 
"being  perceived."  I  cannot  imagine  what  a  change  in  conscious- 
ness could  be  which  was  not  also  a  consciousness  of  change.  The 
addition  of  higher  processes  of  comparison  simply  pushes  the  ques- 

''^Art.  "Psychology"  in  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  p.  45. 
^The  Human  Mind,  Vol.  I,  chap.  7,  sec.  3. 
^Outline  of  Psychology,  Part  III,  sec.  17,  par.  6. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  51 

tion  back  to  what  we  mean  by  the  first  primary  differentiations,  and 
how  the  rudimentary  agreements  and  differences  got  there ;  it  seems 
really  to  be  involving  the  expression  of  the  problem  without  making 
any  advance  toward  its  solution.  As  Kiilpe  says  of  sensible  dis- 
crimination : 

The  phrase  "sensible  discrimination"  must  not  be  taken  to  denote  a 
faculty  of  comparison,  in  the  sense  of  a  peculiar  conscious  process  existing 
alongside  of  the  various  contents.  It  merely  expresses,  in  the  first  instance, 
the  general  fact  that  we  have  different  experiences  and  experience  them 
differently;  in  other  words,  it  covers  the  introspection  of  different  contents 
and  the  report  of  their  difference." 

Probably  the  two  most  notable  expositions  treating  avowedly 
of  the  fundamental  nature  of  the  discriminative  process  are  those  of 
John  Stuart  Mill  and  Professor  James.  In  Mill's  experimental 
methods  for  the  selection  of  the  cause  of  a  given  effect  we  have 
offered  four  or  five  different  forms  or  groups  of  circumstances  in 
which  the  same  principle  may  exhibit  itself.  The  selection  of  the 
"  sole  invariable  antecedent "  is  the  problem.  But  when  we  are  told 
to  regard  as  the  cause  of  a  phenomenon  that  which  is  always  present 
when  the  effect  is  present  (and  absent  when  it  is  absent),  we  must 
suppose  an  already  highly  analyzed  and  formulated  series  of  ante- 
cedents in  the  situation.  We  presuppose  a  definite  and  recognizable 
"  that  which  " —  some  known  thing  which  we  are  to  decide  about  as 
being  present  or  absent ;  i.  e.,  we  must  have  some  pretty  definite  pre- 
conception of  the  possible  causes  or  antecedents  before  we  could 
know  if  any  one  were  always  present  or  not.  Mill's  directions  would 
apply  very  well  in  case  of  a  formulated  disjunctive  question ;  i.  e.,  if 
we  knew  that  the  cause  were  either  5  or  C  or  D,  then  we  could 
proceed  to  our  observation  as  to  whether  B  or  C  or  D  were  the  sole 
invariable  antecedent.  In  many  cases,  however,  the  question  is  left 
indefinite;  it  is,  "What  is  the  cause  of  Af  not,  "Is  the  cause 
j5  or  C  or  Df  And  the  experimental  methods  do  not  answer  how 
we  are  to  get  a  definite  somewhat  out  of  this  indefinite  what. 

James  attacks  the  question  in  the  two  complementary  aspects  of 
"dissociation  by  varying  concomitants  "  and  "  association  by  similar- 
ity or  partial  identity."  Each  of  these  formulas,  in  spite  of  its 
value  from  a  descriptive  point  of  view,  seems  inadequate  as  an 
explanation,  since  it  is  expressed  in  terms  of  that  which  it  purports 
to  explain.    In  the  "varying  concomitants"  the  discriminations  are 

^Outline  of  Psychology,  Part  I,  chap,  i,  div.  5. 


52  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

already  given  which  we  wish  to  know  about,  the  variation  is  the 
whole  question,  and  in  the  association  by  "  partial  identity  "  it  is  just 
the  nature  of  that  partition  and  that  identity  which  is  the  object  of 
our  inquiry. 

All  statements  of  discrimination,  it  seems  to  me,  must  be  finally 
forced  back  to  the  conclusion  that  on  the  psychical  side  this  activity 
is  primarily  a  consciousness  of  difference  or  of  change,  and  that 
further  investigation  concerning  it  must  begin  with  an  inquiry  about 
the  meaning  of  the  physiological  substratum  of  discrimination.  The 
process  which  psychically  is  a  consciousness  of  shift  finds  its  occasion 
in  the  almost  infinitely  varied  field  of  nervous  modification,  and  any 
profitable  account  of  the  discrimination  of  the  normal  mind  must 
make  some  allusion  to  the  genesis  and  purpose  of  the  differentiation 
of  the  sense-organs.  This  is,  of  course,  merely  an  iteration  of  the 
fact  that  all  psychical  process  is  correlative  with  nervous  process, 
and  that  it  must  find  at  least  a  part  of  its  significance  in  that  con- 
nection. Historically  the  associative-discriminative  aspect  of  con- 
sciousness has  been  the  one  worked  out  in  a  physiological  interest, 
and  it  is  the  place,  therefore,  where  the  body-mind  discussion  seems 
most  appropriately  to  come  in.  The  law  of  association,  as  worked 
out  by  the  old  school,  particularly  in  the  case  of  Hartley,  Priestly, 
Lamettrie,  and  Condillac,  was  almost  completely  physiological  in  its 
statement.  At  the  present  day  nearly  all  psychological  accounts  of 
association  and  habit  are  carried  on  frankly  in  physiological  con- 
ceptions, and  in  many  cases  —  e.  g.,  explanations  of  color-contrast  — 
our  tendency  seems  to  be  to  work  away,  when  possible,  from  the  psy- 
chical to  the  physiological  formulations.  It  seems  peculiarly  satis- 
factory to  us  when  we  can  definitely  locate  some  mental  function  — 
find,  say,  the  occasion  for  a  discrimination  in  the  conformation  of 
an  end-organ ;  for  that  seems  to  be  a  guarantee  of  the  accessibility  of 
that  function  to  control.  As  psychologists,  then,  it  is  becoming  not 
to  reject  or  neglect  the  physiological  explanations  which  are  of  such 
unquestioned  service,  but  to  interpret  what  from  the  psychological 
standpoint  we  mean  by  physiology  or  by  the  relation  of  mind  and 
body. 

It  seems  to  me  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  experiencing 
individual  his  body  is  nothing  more  nor  less  to  him  than  the  residu- 
ary of  the  habits  which  are  not  within  the  range  of  present  attention. 
His  body  is  the  substance  of  his  possibilities  —  a  name  or  symbol  for 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  53 

certain  interests,  powers,  or  perfected  techniques.  In  the  Psychology 
of  Aristotle  we  find: 

The    soul  ....  is    the    manifestation    of    the    inner    meaning    of  ...  . 

a  body If,  for  example,  the  eye  were  possessed  of  life,  vision  would 

be  its  soul :  because  vision  is  the  reality  which  expresses  the  idea  of  the  eye. 
The  eye  itself,  on  the  other  hand,  is  merely  the  material  substratum  for 
vision;    and  when  this  power  of  vision  fails,  it  no  longer  remains  an  eye.^ 

A  similar  thought  is  expressed  in  an  article  by  Professor  Bawden: 
The  function  of  an  organ  is  the  meaning  of  that  organ  as  expressed  in 

its  activity If  I  want  to  understand  the  meaning  of  any  structure  I 

ask  how  it  functions.  Function  in  biology  is  another  word  for  meaning  or 
significance.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the  psychical  is  related  to  the  physical. 
Matter,  so  to  speak,  is  the  structure  of  which  mind  is  the  function,  and  the 
meaning  or  significance  of  matter  comes  out  only  in  its  activity,  only  as  it 
functions.^' 

As  Aristotle  says,  then,  the  soul  is  the  idea  of  the  body  —  it  is  the 
actualization  of  that  which  is  potential  in  the  body ;  and,  as  Profes- 
sor Bawden  rephrases  it,  the  psychical  is  related  to  the  physical  as 
meaning  is  to  fact.  Agreeing  with  this,  we  may  argue  also  for  the 
corollary,  that  it  is  body  which  gives  meaning  to  mind.  Nothing, 
certainly,  is  more  patent  to  us  than  our  own  mental  state,  and  yet 
as  such,  as  mere  fact,  of  what  use  is  it?  Evolutionists  would  say 
that  the  sole  function  or  purpose  of  consciousness  is  to  effect  an 
adjustment  between  the  physical  organism  and  its  surroundings  — 
that  the  disturbance  of  the  balance  is  the  only  excuse  of  consciousness 
for  existing.  All  our  educational  struggles  seem  to  be  directed 
toward  the  implanting  —  i.  e.,  rendering  automatic  or  as  purely 
physiological  as  possible  —  certain  habits.  Our  aim  is  to  modify 
neural  structure.  Schopenhauer's  phrase  is  apropos  when  he  speaks 
of  the  body  as  the  "  objectification  of  the  will." 

On  such  an  hypothesis  {i.  e.,  that  the  body  is  just  the  support  of 
the  technical  element  in  experience)  the  investigations  of  phys- 
iological psychology  become  an  abstraction  from  the  more  general 
study  of  habit.  In  the  psychical  distinction  between  attention  and 
habit  we  are  wont  to  call  habit  the  mechanical  and  attention  the 
purposive  aspect  of  mental  life.     In  our  actual  living  the  two  are 

^Wallace's  translation,  p.  63. 

""^Journal  of  Comparative  Neurology,  March,  1901  ;  cf.  McDougall,  "A  Con- 
tribution toward  an  Improvement  in  Psychological  Method ; "  Mtnd,  N.  S., 
Vol.  VII. 


54  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

forever  interlaced,  but  the  physiological  standpoint  is,  to  the  psy- 
chical individual,  an  abstraction  which  takes  the  mechanical  side  as 
fundamental.  As  a  thing  retreats  toward  the  fringe  of  consciousness, 
it  tends  to  become  immersed  in  the  vague  medium  of  common  feeling 
or  to  be  submerged  into  mere  somatic  disposition.  Physiology  is  a 
statement  of  that  part  of  the  individual  experience  which  has  become 
most  submerged  and  mechanized  —  a  statement  about  the  experience 
which  has  ceased  to  be  immediate,  and  hence  has  passed  out  of  the 
field  of  psychology  proper ;  it  is  a  science  which  accepts  the  mechan- 
ical point  of  view  as  final,  and  which  formulates  the  mechanical 
control  toward  which  psychology  as  a  whole  is  directed. 

If  the  above  view  can  hope  to  be  explanatory  of  anything,  it 
is  in  this  way,  that  it  considers  the  relation  of  the  "physical" 
stimulus  to  the  "psychical "  sensation  to  be  precisely  the  same  as  the 
relation  of  habit  to  attention,  and  it  suggests  that  stimulus  versus 
sensation  is  but  another  group  of  terms  expressive  of  the  fact  that 
consciousness  is  mechanical  versus  purposive,  sensational  versus  in- 
tellectual, emotional  versus  rational,  etc.  A  stimulus  is  not  something 
which,  starting  in  the  physiological  mechanism  and  itself  remaining 
physical,  finally  hits  against  a  psychical  something ;  but,  just  as  we 
say  of  habit,  it  does  start  as  physical,  but  itself  becomes  psychical ; 
i.  e.;  it  starts  as  a  possibility  and  becomes  an  actuality.  The  quality 
of  the  stimulus  corresponds  to  the  content  of  the  habit  —  the  habit 
content  is  unknown  save  as  a  second  habit  conflicts  with  the  first,  and 
the  stimulus  quality  is  unappreciated  except  as  the  stimulus  is  dis- 
criminated from  others. 

It  is  of  the  very  first  importance,  in  any  discussion  of  association 
as  fundamental  psychic  fact,  that  we  should  examine  what  we  mean 
by  a  psychic  bond  of  union  (an  association)  or  by  an  experience 
of  change  or  transition  (a  discrimination).  In  other  words,  the 
problem  of  conscious  continuity  seems  to  be  the  most  suggestive 
way  of  reshaping  the  question  of  the  nature  of  discrimination- 
association.  Among  the  many  doctrines  directly  or  indirectly  ex- 
pressive of  the  general  fact  of  the  continuity  of  psychical  states  we 
may  mention  some  of  the  most  notable.  Leibnitz  proposed  the  theory 
of  the  p elites  perceptions,  which  are  to  be  defined  as  the  obscure 
substratum  out  of  which  apperception  comes  as  final  issue,  or  (in  the 
plural)  as  the  weak  and  in  themselves  unconscious  impulses  which, 
when  summed  together,  give  a  conscious  presentation.    The  impulse 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  55 

of  the  monad,  Windelband  ^^  explains,  is  directed  toward  passing 
from  obscure  to  clear  representations. 

To  this  above-mentioned  intensity  of  the  representation  Leibnitz  applies 
the  mechanical  principle  of  infinitely  small  impulses :  he  calls  these  infinitely 
small  constituent  parts  of  the  representative  life  of  the  monads  petites  per- 
ceptions, ....  In  the  language  of  today  the  petites  perceptions  would  be 
unconscious  mental  states. 

A  very  similar  conception  is  that  introduced  by  Fechner  in  his 
interpretation  of  the  Weber  law,  when  he  says  that  every  least  dis- 
cernible difference  within  a  given  situation  is  equal  to  every  other, 
or  is  capable  of  being  a  unit  of  psychic  measurement.  It  should  be 
observed  in  this  connection  that  the  assumption  of  any  sort  of 
measurability  among  psychic  phenomena  is,  by  the  nature  of  measur- 
ability,  an  assumption  of  some  sort  of  psychic  constancy.  The  like- 
ness of  Fechner's  conception  to  that  of  Leibnitz  lies,  of  course,  in 
the  idea  that  an  intense  sensation  is  composed  of  a  number  of  weak 
sensations  added  together.  Not  very  far  removed  in  its  implications 
is  the  already  quoted  atomic  theory  of  Miinsterberg,  in  which  the 
psychic  presentation  is  supposed  to  be  compounded  out  of  forever 
unknowable  atoms  or  unconscious  parts.  The  conception  of  uncon- 
scious ideation  rises  to  a  position  of  great  importance  in  von  Hart- 
mann's  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,  His  proposal  there,  de- 
veloped gradually  throughout  the  work,  of  a  supportative  back- 
ground of  unconscious  will  and  idea  as  the  residuum  of  all  conscious 
process  not  immediately  in  play  gives,  as  Leibnitz  had  done,  a  psy- 
chological name  and  status  to  that  which  others  have  called  either 
a  merely  physiological  condition  or  a  metaphysical  assumption ;  but 
von  Hartmann  differs  from  his  predecessors  by  giving  to  the 
Unconscious  {i.  e.,  to  his  idea  of  continuity)  an  importance  equal  to 
that  of  any  clearly  differentiated  conscious  content.  Other  and  per- 
haps better  expressions  for  the  idea  of  continuity  are  the  phrases 
"psychic  disposition,"  "temperamental  coloring,"  "stream  of  con- 
sciousness," "personal  equation,"  "the  self;"  all  these  are  phrases 
meant  to  be  indicative  of  the  shadowy  influences  which  permeate  our 
experience  and  set  in  relief  the  bolder  lines  of  action. 

Conscious  continuity,  I  should  say,  is  consciousness  in  its  emo- 
tional aspect,  and  the  reasons  for  characterizing  this  indefinite  sup- 
portative  background  as  emotional  are  as  follows : 

I.  Emotion  is  conceded  to  be  the  conscious  concomitant  of  com- 

" History  of  Philosophy,   Part  IV,  chap.   2,  sec.    11. 


56  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

plicated  physiological  disturbance ;  its  intimate  connection  with 
instinctive  and  habitual  reactions  (however  that  connection  is  ex- 
plained) is  attested  by  all  theories  of  emotion.  Emotion  is  the 
psychic  registration  of  the  somatic  conditions  as  a  whole;  in  dis- 
tinction from  ideation,  it  may  be  said  to  be  the  simultaneous  con- 
sciousness of  many  different  things,  and  hence  to  reduce  to  a 
homogeneous  indeterminate.  Spencer's  distinction  between  the 
physical  and  the  psychical  we  may  appropriate  as  a  distinction 
between  emotion  and  ideation: 

The  two  great  classes  of  vital  actions  called  Physiology  and  Psychology 
are  broadly  distinguished  in  this,  that  while  the  one  includes  both  simul- 
taneous and  successive  changes  the  other  includes  successive  changes  only. 
The  phenomena  forming  the  subject-matter  of  Physiology  present  themselves 
as  an  immense  number  of  different  series  bound  up  together.  Those  forming 
the  subject-matter  of  Psychology  present  themselves  as  but  a  single  series." 

The  correspondence  between  emotional  capacity  and  the  equip- 
ment of  habit  is  partly  indicated  in  these  points  :  (a)  On  the  intro- 
spective side,  the  consciousness  of  a  well-working  habit  seems  to  us 
to  be  appropriately  designated  as  a  feeling.  When  a  piano  player  sits 
down  to  perform  a  long  and  intricate  composition,  he  is  conscious 
to  a  certain  extent  of  the  habit  or  practiced  reactions  which  will 
carry  him  through,  but  in  that  consciousness  there  is  no  detailed 
appreciation  of  the  separate  finger  movements  or  wrist  and  arm  ten- 
sions, no  recollection  of  the  exact  way  in  which  he  has  played  it 
before,  nor  of  the  number  of  times ;  his  confidence  comes  rather 
from  a  pure  inward  conviction;  he  "feels"  that  he  can  do  it. 
(b)  The  variety  and  intensity  of  emotional  reactions  vary  directly 
with  the  number  and  strength  of  the  habits  in  our  mental  outfit.  In 
reading  a  novel  or  watching  a  drama  we  find  that  those  characters 
most  engage  our  interest  and  enlist  our  sympathy  and  appreciation 
whose  ways  and  tastes  are  most  like  our  own  ways  and  tastes,  who 
suggest  to  us  our  own  habits.  In  contrasting  human  beings  with 
the  lower  animals  we  are  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  animal  which 
has  fewer  and  simpler  instincts  and  reflexes  is  also  more  narrowly 
restricted  in  the  range  of  his  emotions.  In  adult  life,  with  its  more 
complicated  adjustments,  emotion  finds  more  frequent  occasion  than 
in  childhood,  and  displays  finer  and  more  numerous  shadings  and 
shif tings,  (c)  In  the  most  violent  emotions  those  parts  of  the 
organism  are  shaken  which  perform  its  most  fundamental  functions. 

^^  Spencer,  Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  Part  IV,  sec.  177,  p.  395. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  57 

In  Other  words,  those  structures  which  represent  in  the  history  of 
the  race  the  first-formed  habits  —  the  digestive,  circulatory,  respira- 
tory, locomotive  organs  —  are  the  ones  which  fill  out  the  "reson- 
ances '  in  our  stronger  emotions;  whereas  in  the  more  evanescent 
flitting  emotions  only  certain  nicely  balanced  individual  movements 
take  place.  For  instance,  in  cases  of  unusual  effort  or  extreme 
anger  the  breathing,  the  circulation,  the  digestive  tracts,  and  the 
larger  muscles  all  seem  to  be  involved,  so  that  there  survives  after 
the  emotion  in  both  cases  a  distinct  experience  of  muscular  exhaus- 
tion and  of  nausea.  On  the  other  hand,  many  a  momentary  feeling 
is  recorded  only  by  some  nearly  unnoticed  facial  twitch  or  delicate 
trilling  of  the  fingers.  In  this  connection  we  notice  that  the  words 
in  common  speech  by  which  we  define  emotions  are  derived  from 
the  names  of  the  most  elemental  and  earliest-evolved  sense-organs ; 
e.  g.,  from  touch,  pressure,  smell,  taste,  we  get  "  feeling,"  "  taste," 
"  bitter,"  "  sweet,"  "  disgust,"  "  depression,"  "  exaltation,"  "  elation." 
In  the  case  of  intellectual  terms,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find  the  words 
used  which  point  to  the  later-developed  habits;  e.  g.,  we  "see," 
"  perceive,"  "  imagine."  Ribot  implies  that  a  more  prominent  part 
is  played  in  emotion  by  the  "  lower  "  than  by  the  "  higher  "  senses,  in 
his  grouping  of  the  lower  sensations  with  emotion :  ^® 

The  impressions  of  smell  and  taste,  our  visceral  sensations,  our  pleasant, 
or  painful,  states,  our  emotions  and  passions,  like  the  perceptions  of  sight 
and  hearing,  can  leave  memories  behind  them. 

{d)  It  is  pre-eminently  in  emotion  that  the  tensions  which  constitute 
the  content  of  self-feeling  come  into  prominence. 

Emotion,  then,  as  correlative  with  the  substratum  of  habitual 
tendency,  is  the  index  of  conscious  possibility.  It  includes  the 
function  of  consciousness  of  self  as  the  residuum  of  undeveloped 
intentions  and  as  the  guarantee  of  our  identity  or  continuity  in 
consciousness.  It  is,  therefore,  qualified  to  do  duty  as  the  Uncon- 
scious, the  psychic  disposition,  the  fringe  of  consciousness. 

2.  The  second  reason  for  identifying  continuity  with  emotion 
has  already  been  touched  on :  it  is  that  the  idea  of  continuity  is,  or 
involves  the  idea  of,  something  persistent  or  homogeneous  in  all 
conscious  process,  something  common  in  all  psychic  states,  and  that 
feeling  or  the  emotional  element  fits  such  a  description.  Feeling  is 
internally  homogeneous,  and  it  is  present  in  every  conscious  process 

^The  Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  chap.  11,  p.  141. 


58  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

from  the  most  convulsive  outbreak  of  passion  to  the  serenest  intel- 
lectual contemplation. 

3.  Once  more,  introspectively,  our  experience  of  continuous 
transition  is  a  feeling.     Spencer  says : 

It  is  true  that,  under  an  ultimate  analysis,  what  we  call  a  relation  proves 
to  be  itself  a  kind  of  feeling — ^the  momentary  feeling  accompanying  the  transi- 
tion from  one  conspicuous  feeling  to  an  adjacent  conspicuous  feeling.^ 

And  James: 

We  ought  to  say  a  feeling  of  and,  a  feeling  of  if,  a  feeling  of  but  and 
a  feeling  of  by,  quite  as  readily  as  we  say  a  feeling  of  blue  or  a  feeling  of 
cold.'' 

Assuming,  then,  an  emotional  connotation  for  the  idea  of  psy- 
chic continuity,  let  us  proceed  to  a  statement  of  the  act  of  discrim- 
ination as  a  ground-work  for  the  formulation  of  meaning.  The 
process  of  discrimination  may  be  described  as  the  passage  of  con- 
sciousness between  two  points  which  form  the  limits  of  a  continuum 
or  a  gradual  shading  from  the  one  to  the  other.  Every  point  in  the 
continuum  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  resultant  of  the  two  limits,  and  as 
itself  a  possible  limit  of  some  other  continuum.  The  two  termini  are 
the  intellectual  phase  of  the  experience,  and  the  intervening  con- 
tinuum is  the  emotional  part.  Thus  between  blue  and  green  there 
is  a  possible  series  of  colors  merging  gradually  from  the  one  to  the 
other,  and  at  any  point  between  the  two  there  is  a  color  which  is 
neither  blue  nor  green,  and  yet  which  is  both  —  a  color  which,  homo- 
geneous in  itself,  may  still  be  analyzed  into  blue  and  green.  In  this 
particular  experience  of  discriminating  blue  from  green  this  middle 
point  is  the  place  of  neutral  excitement  —  the  "  sensation  of  differ- 
ence "  of  which  James  speaks  —  or  an  emotion  which  is  indifferently 
either  blue  or  green ;  it  is  the  common  element  between  them.  But 
this  experience  may  itself  become  the  limit  of  a  discrimination  or  one 
term  (terminus)  of  an  association.  In  the  case  of  the  blue-green 
there  is  possible  a  long  series  of  fine  shadings,  but  there  are  other 
experiences  in  which  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  any  such  series ;  e.  g., 
in  discriminating  a  tone  from  a  color.  Even  here,  however,  we  must 
assume  at  least  one  common  element,  one  point  between  the  two 
experiences  which  contains  something  of  each  of  them  in  order 

^Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  sec.  65,  p.   164. 

'^^Psychology,  Vol.  I ;  Calkins,  Introduction  to  Psychology,  chap.  10,  p.  136, 
distinguishes  a  "  relational "  element  in  experience,  separate,  however,  not  only 
from  sensational  elements,  but  from  affective  elements  as  well. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE 


UNfVCRSITY  j 


/f 


that  we  ever  get  from  one  to  the  other,  or  that  they  may  be  modifica- 
tions of  the  same  consciousness.  The  postulate  of  continuity  in 
consciousness  is  this,  that  the  conception  of  the  continuum  or  the 
presence  of  an  indifference  point  between  extremes  shall  hold  good 
of  every  conscious  act  whatsoever;  that,  on  the  one  hand,  no 
two  things  can  exist  in  consciousness  so  totally  different  but  that 
some  common  ground  may  be  found  between  them,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that,  even  in  ^he  case  of  a  least  discernible  difference,  no  two 
impressions  can  be  so  nearly  alike,  so  close  together,  but  that  we 
can  imagine  some  point  between  them  which  shall  partake  of  the 
nature  of  each.  Supporting  this  view,  we  have  the  common  experi- 
ence in  the  laboratory  of  being  able  to  distinguish  the  fact  of 
difference  before  v-^  can  tell  the  direction  or  the  sort  of  difference. 
We  can  tell  that  two  tones  or  weights  or  colors  are  different,  but 
cannot  tell  which  is  which ;  and  it  is  out  of  this  consciousness  that 
the  discrimination  of  the  two  termini  follows.  On  this  general  topic 
of  psychic  continuity  we  have  also  this  from  Ward : 

At  any  given  moment  we  have  a  certain  whole  of  presentations,  a  "field 
of  consciousness"  psychologically  one  and  continuous;  at  the  next  we  have 
not  an  entirely  new  field,  but  a  partial  change  within  this  field.*^ 

And  from  Stout: 

We  have  not  merely  A  and  then  B,  but  also  the  passage  of  A  into  B; 
and  this  passage  as  such  is  a  modification  of  consciousness.^ 

We  can,  if  we  wish,  distinguish  emotion  as  concrete  or  abstract 
according  to  the  limits  between  which  it  stretches,  but  this  distinc- 
tion is  made  from  some  external  point  of  view,  not  from  that  of  the 
process  in  which  the  emotion  occurs.  Thus,  in  the  discrimination  of 
blue  from  green  the  feeling  involved  is  the  emotion  of  the  blue-green 
series ;  but  in  comparing  a  statue  with  a  flower  the  grounds  of 
likeness  and  the  emotions  concerned  are  much  more  general.  The 
anger  of  a  civilized  man  is  from  this  point  of  view  more  highly 
generalized  than  the  anger  of  the  savage ;  because  in  the  case  of  the 
savage  the  emotion  mediates  merely  between  being  hit  and  hitting 
back;  i.  e,,  the  reaction  is  well  fixed  and  the  series  of  movements 
more  readily  recognized  as  continuous ;  but  with  the  man  who  checks 
his  first  physical  responses  the  emotion  of  anger  may  have  to  mediate 
between  the  stimulus  and  some  long-deferred  revenge,  and,  since 

^^Art.   "Psychology"  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  p.  45. 
^Manual  of  Psychology,  Book  I,  chap.  2,  sec.  2. 


6o  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

the  terms  of  the  retaHation  may  be  greatly  varied,  the  emotion  may 
have  to  be  the  sign  of  any  one  of  a  number  of  possible  modes  of 
response. 

If,   now,  value   emerges  with  the   fact  of   reference,   then,   in 
terms  of  the  above  discussion,  value  must  arise  in  the  process  of 

discrimination,    a x b.    The  meaning  of  a  lies 

in  its  reference  to  b  —  it  must  be  read  off  in  terms  of  that  from 
which  it  is  discriminated.  In  perceiving  a  difference  between  a  and 
b,  in  saying  that  the  meaning  of  a  is  b,  we  seem  to  be  conscious  in 
some  way  or  other  of  two  things  at  the  same  time.  According  to  the 
accepted  theory  of  attention,  however,  only  one  thing  at  a  time  can  be 
within  the  focus  of  consciousness,  and  therefore,  although  the 
meaning  of  a  lies  in  b,  and  the  meaning  is  felt  to  be  immediately 
apprehended,  yet  b  cannot  be  present  in  its  fullest  intellectual 
character.  For  if  the  consciousness  of  value  were  constituted 
by  b  itself,  then  b  and  not  a  would  be  our  mental  content;  e.  g,, 
we  value  pleasure  the  more  by  reason  of  contrast  with  pain,  but 
if  our  consciousness  of  this  reference  to  pain  were  made  up  of 
the  actual  experience  of  pain,  then  we  should  not  have  pleasure 
at  all,  but  pain.  We  may  say  that  this  consciousness  of  meaning 
is  mediated  by  the  intervening  neutral  state,  that  the  feeling  con- 
tinuum which  fringes  or  borders  directly  upon  a  is  the  symbol 
of  value,  or  the  sign  of  the  other  thought  which  is  being  referred 
to  in  the  discrimination.  Value  is  constituted  by  the  act  of  com- 
parison, but  it  is  experienced  as  feeling. 


Let  a-b-c-d  represent  the  centers  of  attention  in  a  train  of 
thought,  and  1-2-y^  the  feeling  substrate.  (The  ordinates  i,  2,  3,  4 
may  vary  in  their  length,  but  never  quite  become  zero.)  In  the 
successive  foci  of  the  conscious  process  a-b-c-d,  the  meaning  of  b, 
say,  is  constituted  by  its  relation  to  the  train  of  thought  a-c,  but 
in  a  cross-section  view  of  consciousness  at  b  the  content  of  a  is 
present  only  as  the  feeling  2  into  which  a  has  subsided.  The  mean- 
ing of  b,  then,  is  to  be  measured  by  the  number  of  trains  of  thought 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  6i 

to  which  it  refers,  or  by  the  richness  and  variety  of  its  emotional 
accompaniment. 

The  difference  between  this  view  of  the  function  of  feeling  and 
certain  other  views  may  be  brought  out  by  turning  to  the  question 
of  the  generalization  of  feeling  or  emotion.  Thus  far  we  have 
given  no  definition  of  the  terms  "  feeling,"  "  emotion,"  "  mood,"  or 
"sentiment,"  but  we  have  been  all  the  while  moving  toward  the 
idea  that  any  one  of  these  terms  (for  our  present  purpose  they  are 
not  theoretically  distinguishable)  is  the  general  aspect,  or  the  class 
mark,  of  any  and  every  conscious  content  with  which  it  may  be 
developed.  The  question  is  definitely  raised  by  W.  Urban  ^*  and 
by  T.  Elsenhans  ^^  as  to  whether  there  is  a  process  of  generalization 
or  abstraction  among  emotions  as  there  is  in  case  of  cognitions: 
is  there  a  "logic  of  the  emotions,"  or  are  there  feeling-concepts  as 
there  are  thought-concepts  ?  Both  answer  in  the  affirmative.  Urban 
alludes  to  Wundt's  "conceptual  feeling"  and  cites  Meinong  and 
Ehrenfels  as  follows : 

Both  Meinong  and  Ehrenfels  have  pointed  out  with  considerable  subtlety 
that  the  phenomena  of  transference  of  sentiment  and  its  expansion  cannot  be 
explained  by  mere  association  of  ideas.  There  is  an  element  of  judgment 
in  the  process  which  makes  it  of  the  nature  of  a  subsumption.*" 

There  is  this  also  from  Ribot: 

Intellectual  complexity  involves  emotional  complexity.  If  we  compare 
the  primary  emotions  to  the  simplest  perception  of  sight  and  hearing, 
the  complex  emotions  will  correspond  to  the  perception  of  an  extensive 
landscape  or  a  symphony." 

Titchener  develops  this  idea  when  he  says: 

The  feeling  stands  on  the  same  level  of  mental  development  as  the  per- 
ception or  idea.** 

The  emotion  stands  upon  the  same  level  of  mental  development  as  the 
simultaneous  association  of  ideas.^ 

The  mood  stands  upon  the  same  level  of  mental  development  as  the  train 
of  ideas." 

'^Psychological  Review,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  262,  "The  Problem  of  a  Logic  of  the 
Emotions." 

^Ueber  Verallgemeinerung  der  GefUhle,  noted  in  Psychological  Review,  Vol. 
VIII,  p.   310. 

*'0/>.  cit.,  p.  265. 

'^''Psychology  of  the  Emotions,  sec.  3.  chap.  7.  ^Ibid.,  p.  219- 

^An  Outline  of  Psychology,  chap,  9,  p.  214.  *^Ibid.,  p.  233. 


62  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

The  objection  I  raise  to  all  these  formulations  is  this,  that  they 
seem  to  treat  the  emotional  processes  as  co-ordinate  with  and  analo- 
gous to  the  cognitive,  whereas,  feeling  and  thought  being  highly  anti- 
thetical, it  is  against  all  experience  to  expect  them  to  behave  in  like 
ways.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  truth,  which  such  discussions  as 
these  referred  to  have  brought  out,  may  be  as  fully  covered  and 
better  explained  by  saying,  not  that  we  have  abstract  emotions  like 
concepts,  but  that  the  abstract  or  conceptual  element  of  any  psy- 
chosis is  an  emotion.  Now,  if  we  wish  a  differential  statement  for 
feeling,  emotion,  mood,  sentiment,  we  may  name  them  concrete  or 
abstract,  simple  or  complex,  according  to  the  cognitive  status  of  the 
two  extremes  between  which  they  mediate.  Thus  a  feeling  is  the 
continuum  between  two  simple  sense-qualities  like  blue  and  green, 
but  a  mood  or  sentiment  the  continuum  between,  say,  the  color  of 
the  sky  and  the  poem  which  we  have  been  reading.  But,  as  above 
stated,  that  difference  in  feeling  emotion,  sentiment,  and  what  not 
is  not  at  all  indicative  of  any  difference  in  their  function  or  essential 
nature ;  it  may  be  used  merely  as  a  descriptive  convenience. 

To  bring  out  more  clearly  the  emotional  nature  of  the  concept: 
A  concept,  we  may  say,  is  an  image  which  functions  for  more  than 
one  situation,  or  it  is  the  principle  of  identity  between  two  or  more 
different  things  —  it  is  generic.  As  a  concept  becomes  more  gener- 
alized and  abstract  —  i.  e.,  as  it  increases  in  extension  —  its  image 
becomes  more  purely  symbolical,  and  the  number  of  qualities  for 
which  it  stands  grows  less.  The  number  of  qualities  decreases,  but 
not  the  fact  of  quality,  so  that,  as  we  approach  nearer  and  nearer 
to  the  supreme  genus,  the  conceptual  content  is  coming  nearer  and 
nearer  to  a  single  pure  quality  —  a  quality  with  the  minimum  of 
differentiation,  but  with  a  maximum  of  extension  or  denotation ;  a 
simple  quality  which  has  a  strength  of  designation  or  "  thereness ; " 
a  vivid  insistence  that  something  exists  without  any  suggestion  as 
to  what  it  is.  And  this  we  recognize  as  the  precise  character  of 
feeling  or  emotion.  The  conceptual  consciousness,  then,  would  be 
quite  a  different  thing  from  the  perceptual  or  attentive  conscious- 
ness. If  the  criterion  of  attention  be  clearness  of  mental  content, 
and  if  we  define  clearness  as  "amount  of  objective  detail,"  then 
it  is  obvious  that  the  conceptual  consciousness  is  more  germane  to 
the  emotional  than  to  the  intellectual  aspect  of  psychic  activity.  Our 
apprehension  by  concept  is  an  implicit  apprehension ;  when  we  say 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  63 

"animal,''  we  are  not  aware  of  every  animal  we  ever  saw,  but  we 
have  a  feeling  of  possibilities  which  could  find  adequate  expression 
only  in  a  long  series  of  images.    As  Angell  puts  it : 

There  is  often  present,  as  a  highly  important  accompaniment,  a  definite 
(quasi-affective)  attitude  of  familiarity  with  the  word,  and  a  feeling  of  placid 
conviction  that  at  any  moment  the  explicit  associates  which  give  it  meaning 
could,  if  necessary,  be  summoned  before  us.*^ 

What  we  immediately  have  is  an  emotional  state  —  an  apprecia- 
tion without  perfect  discrimination.    The  concept  is,  in  terms  of  the 

former  discussion,  a x b,  the  midpoint  in  the 

continuum  between  a  and  h;  it  is  the  common  ground  or  the 
abstraction  of  the  generic  element  in  them.*^ 

Coming  now  to  our  restatement  of  value  from  the  standpoint 
of  discrimination,  we  must  say  that  the  condition  of  the  emergence 
of  meaning  and  of  our  apprehension  of  it  is  the  continuity  of  con- 
sciousness. We  cannot  have  two  foci  of  thought  at  the  same  time, 
but  an  emotion  and  a  thought,  the  focus  and  its  fringe,  can  be  in 
the  mind  at  the  same  time.  It  is  this  fact,  and  the  fact  that  the  emo- 
tion represents  or  functions  vicariously  for  other  absent  thoughts, 
which  make  possible  all  substitution  or  symbolism.  Meaning  de- 
pends upon  the  possibility  of  making  one  thing,  an  emotion,  stand 
for  other  things,  thoughts,  i.  e.,  on  the  possibility  of  using  symbols. 
We  are  accustomed  to  recognize  that  progress  or  improved  self- 
control  is  conditioned  by  our  ability  to  use  symbols  for  experience  — 
by  our  ability  to  condense  past  experiences  into  meanings  which 
are  carried  along  in  consciousness  as  feelings,  and  ability  to  speculate 

"^Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  VI,  p.  649. 

*^This  view  of  the  concept  as  emotional  is  not  unlike  the  logical  status 
accorded  the  concept  by  J.  H.  Muirhead  in  "The  Place  of  the  Concept  in  Logical 
Doctrine,"  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  SiS,  521.  He  says:  "We  say  we  have  a 
'notion'  of  a  thing  though  we  cannot  describe  it,  that  it  is  undescribable  or  (after 
we  have  heard  it  described)  that  we  have  a  better  notion  of  it  than  before. 
....  What  popular  language  calls  notions,  I  should  propose,  following  Hegel,  to 
caH'concept.'  ....  According  to  the  traditional  use  the  concept  is  the  group 
of  predicates  by  which  we  have  defined  a  thing.  The  concept  of  gold  is  hard, 
yellow,  bright,  untarnishable  metal.  According  to  the  use  here  suggested,  it  is 
just  the  opposite  ;  it  is  the  element  in  our  consciousness  of  the  thing  which  is 
not  yet  defined  by  any  predicates  but  remains  over  after  we  have  done  our  best, 
as  an  unmanageable  surd."  And  further:  "The  concept  for  which  I  contend  is 
a  region  of  experience  into  which  identity  and  difference  (and  therefore  judg- 
ment)  have  not  yet  penetrated." 


64  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

by  signs  upon  future  events.  The  anticipatory  excitement  which 
we  call  volition  is  constituted  by  our  preconceptions  of  what  our 
experience  is  going  to  be,  and  this  foresight  of  the  "  sort "  of  jexperi- 
ence  we  are  to  have  is  a  conceptual  readiness  for  it,  largely  emotional 
in  its  nature.  Or,  to  put  the  same  thing  in  another  way,  the  final  act 
of  choice  in  a  complex  situation  is  obviously  the  final  merging  of 
all  efforts  into  one  particular  possibility  of  action ;  it  is  a  classifica- 
tion of  our  experience  under  one  genus  —  a  kind  of  handing  it  over 
to  some  one  symbol  which  is  to  represent  it  all. 

A  practical  illustration  of  this  vicarious  functioning  of  the 
emotion  is  to  be  found  in  the  superior  effectiveness  of  the  so-called 
intuitional  method  of  arriving  at  conclusions.  The  "emotional 
method"  of  approaching  a  subject  is  like  the  artist's  procedure  in 
painting  his  picture.  He  does  not  begin  on  some  one  detail,  finish 
that,  and  then  go  on  to  another,  but  he  blocks  out  the  whole  picture 
with  rough  masses  of  color  and  then  elaborates  the  ground-work 
into  the  finished  product.  In  a  like  manner,  the  apprehension  of  a 
situation  takes  first  the  form  of  vague  masses  of  feeling,  which,  if 
we  persist,  may  become  a  finished  perception  of  details.  Emotional 
proficiency  consists  in  a  sensibility  to  fine  shades  of  experience, 
together  with  a  propensity  for  translating  all  situations  into  emo- 
tional terms;  it  means,  in  other  words,  a  rapid  tendency  toward 
assimilation  and  toward  automatisms.  This  is  the  type  of  response 
which  Professor  James,  with  unintended  gallantry,  calls  the  "  femi- 
nine method  of  direct  intuition."  *^  If  it  be  true  that  women  are  more 
deeply  and  more  delicately  emotional  than  men,  then  it  must  be  al- 
lowed that  the  woman  has  one  immense  advantage  in  intellectual 
equipment.  Her  emotional  responsiveness  means  that  she  is  quicker 
in  perception  and  more  rapid  in  adjustment,  just  because  she  is  a 
readier  symbolist  —  willing  to  take  a  vague  impression  as  final,  if  it 
will  serv^e  the  purpose.  Professor  James  approves  of  intuition  as 
a  social  and  domestic  convenience,  but  he  appears  to  believe  that  if 
the  woman  would  be  truly  intellectual,  she  must  resort  to  the  lum- 
bersome  ponderosity  of  the  "  masculine  method "  :  "  Behemoth 
prescribing  rules  of  locomotion  to  the  swan ! " 

The  fact  is  that  the  ability  to  deal  with  a  situation  in  emotional 
terms  is  not  limited  by  sex  nor  is  it  a  thing  which  functions  only 
occasionally  and  in  a  few  special  circumstances;    but  it  is  rather 

*^Psychology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  368,  369. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  65 

the  type  of  response  which  all  intelligence  must  aim  at,  and  must 
attain  if  there  is  to  be  such  a  thing  as  progress.  As  James  says  in 
his  next  paragraph:  "The  first  effect  on  the  mind  of  growing 
cultivated  is  that  processes  once  multiple  get  to  be  performed  by  a 
single  act."" 

**Ibid.,  p.  369. 


III.  MEANING  AS  DEVELOPED  IN  REPRESENTATION 

Directly  in  line  with  the  last  point  made  —  namely,  that  self- 
control  or  conscious  progress  depends  upon  ability  to  use  symbols  — 
comes  the  conception  that  the  fundamental  nature  of  consciousness 
is  exemplified  in  its  imitative  or  iterative  function,  in  its  aspect  as 
self -representative  series  or  system.     Imitation  is  defined  as  "any 

repetition  in  thought,  action,  or  both,  which  reinstates  a  copy 

It  includes  what  is  called  '  self-imitation,'  or  repetition  of  what  is  in 

one's  own  mind This  usage  is  that  of  Tarde,  James,  Royce, 

Baldwin."*^  The  basal  importance  of  this  concept  to  Professor 
Baldwin's  mind  is  signalized  by  the  position  given  it  in  Mental 
Development  in  the  Child  and  in  the  Race.  As  further  indicative 
of  the  fundamental  character  of  imitation  we  may  quote  Professor 
Royce's  words: 

An  imitative  act  appears  to  me  to  be  not  so  much  an  act  that,  in  Pro- 
fessor Baldwin's  phrase,  tends  to  repeat  its  own  stimulus,  as  an  act  that  tends 
to  reinforce,  emphasize,  signalize,  clarify  its  complex  stimulus  by  adding 
thereto  other  and  parallel  series  of  internal  or  organic  stimuli,  which  by  their 
similarity  as  a  series  shall  support,  while  by  their  differences  they  shall  in 
general  supplement,  the  stimulus  in  question.  ....  Imitation  and  model  are 
contrasted  series  of  presentations  whose  relation  keeps  them  apart.  And 
hence  it  is  that,  as  I  myself  suppose  imitation  is,  psychologically  speaking, 
the  one  source  of  our  whole  series  of  conscious  distinctions  between  sub- 
ject and  object,  thought  and  truth,  deed  and  ideal,  impulse  and  conscience, 
inner  world  and  external  world — in  short,  of  all  those  familiar  and  funda-, 
mental  rational  distinctions  which  psychology  has  hitherto  found  so  baffling." 

"The  effect  of  imitation,"  says  Baldwin,  "is  to  make  the  brain 
a  '  repeating  organ,'  and  the  muscular  system  is  the  expression  and 
evidence  of  this  fact."  *^  But  the  difficulty  with  insisting  too  strongly 
upon  the  merely  iterative  aspect  of  imitation,  with  taking  it  too 
literally  as  a  circular  activity  or  a  reinstatement  of  a  copy,  is  just 
this,  that,  taking  imitation  as  a  fundamental  act,  we  shall  get  into 
a  vortex  of  perpetual  motion ;  we  must  conceive  ourselves  as  repeat- 
ing our  responses  and  exercising  our  muscular  system  forevermore. 

^Dictionary   of  Philosophy,   "Imitation,"   definition    (2). 
*^Psychological  Review,  Vol.  II,  pp.  229,  230. 
"Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  26. 

66 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  67 

In  Other  words,  if  it  is  enough  for  the  imitative  act  that  it  imitates, 
we  have  then  no  statement  of  the  incentive  nor  of  the  check  to 
activity,  nothing  to  start  or  to  stop  the  process.  The  same  point 
obtains  against  Professor  Royce's  attempt  (to  be  noticed  later)  to 
develop  an  *'  infinite  multitude  out  of  the  expression  of  a  single  pur- 
pose." It  is  perfectly  true  that  many  of  our  purposes  do  seem  to 
involve  an  indefinite  number  of  imitative  reinstatements.  The  desire 
to  play  a  musical  composition  well  means  a  long  series  of  practice 
performances ;  the  wish  to  remember  every  detail  of  a  picture  in- 
volves many  renewals  and  repetitions  of  the  stimulus ;  and  the  pur- 
pose of  accurate  measurement  calls  for  the  performance  of  the  act  of 
measurement  to  be  done  over  and  over  again ;  the  probability  being 
that  the  greater  the  number  of  such  results  there  are  averaged 
together,  the  nearer  true  the  last  result  will  be.  Our  formula  for 
reassuring  ourselves  or  other  people  of  the  correctness  of  our 
information  is :  "I  know  that  I  know."  In  all  these  cases,  however, 
if  we  assume  that  our  purpose  is  to  get  absolute  knowledge,  perfect 
certainty,  or  complete  accuracy,  we  shall  become  involved  in  an 
infinite  series ;  we  must  go  on  saying,  ''  I  know  that  I  know  that 
I  know  "  ad  infinitum;  must  keep  on  forever  with  our  verifications 
and  take  measurements  to  all  eternity.  The  problem  is  to  find 
something  in  the  self-representative  process  which  shall  check  the 
infinite  series  and  permit  practical  activities. 

Royce's  definition  of  imitation,  as  quoted  above,  seems  to  promise 
such  a  check  in  so  far  as  it  permits  the  response  to  vary  the  stimulus  ; 
but  this  variation  is  not  developed  by  Royce  as  a  definite  limit  to  the 
process ;  its  inhibitory  significance  is  not  dwelt  upon.  The  concep- 
tion of  imitation  as  a  reaction  which  *'  reinforces,  emphasizes,  signal- 
izes, and  clarifies  "  its  stimulus  makes  that  process  cover  any  case  of 
attentive  or  accommodatory  response  whatsoever;  the  imitative  act 
bcomes  the  acknowledgment  and  acceptance  of  a  stimulus.  But  here 
the  question  rephrases  itself :  Is  there  to  be  a  non-selective  imitation 
of  anything  that  offers,  an  indiscriminate  acceptance  of  every  stimu- 
lus ?  This  is  the  doubtful  point  in  presentational  theories  of  knowl- 
edge :  if  the  validity  of  our  idea  rests  upon  its  literal  portrayal  of  an 
outside  reality ;  if  the  imitation  is  to  be  of  such  a  sort  that  we  should 
always  prefer  the  original  if  we  could  get  it ;  if,  in  short,  the  criterion 
lies  outside  the  subject,  then  one  model  is  as  good  as  another  for 
that  subject,  and  it  is  perfectly  comprehensible  that  one  should  go 


68  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

on  copying  one  model  or  reiterating  one  idea  without  end.  An 
external  criterion  affords  no  internal  limits.  The  conception  to  be 
avoided  is  that  everything  given  is  necessarily  accepted.  If  we  take 
the  object  of  representation  or  reinstatement  to  be  a  literal  qualitative 
reproduction,  we  are  ignoring  the  fact  that  in  many  cases  the 
response  to  a  stimulus  is  the  effort  to  avert  it,  and  that  we  desire 
anything  but  a  reinstatement.  We  may  even  say  that  in  practically 
all  cases  the  response  involves  a  wish  for  some  change  in  the  stimu- 
lus. If  this  were  not  so  —  if  the  stimulus  as  present  were  agreeable 
enough  —  why  respond?  When  we  wish  for  a  thing  that  has  been 
given  and  then  withdrawn,  it  is  the  withdrawal  which  is  the  irritant 
to  action.  I  should  say  that  in  most,  if  not  all,  cases  it  is  the 
dissatisfaction  with  the  stimulus  which  is  the  occasion  of  the  reaction 
and  upon  which  depends  the  emergence  of  representation  and  value. 
The  tendency  toward  pure  repetition  of  one's  stimulus  implies  that 
mere  self-maintenance  or  self-consciousness  as  such  is  desirable,  that 
all  stimulation  is  agreeable;  it  is  not  self-consciousness  of  any  sort 
that  we  are  usually  seeking,  but  self-consciousness  controlled.  Self- 
control  demands  that  there  be  a  vigorous  want  of  some  kind  (in 
practical  life  those  people  are  most  unmanageable  whose  wants  are 
hardest  to  discover),  and  value  depends  in  large  measure  upon 
aversion.  It  is  only  when  a  mental  content  is  discriminated  away 
from  something  else,  when  it  stands  in  place  of  something  different, 
when  it  permits  us  to  change  or  avoid  something  in  the  original 
situation,  that  the  content  has  any  point  or  meaning  as  a  repre- 
sentation. 

To  bring  this  out  we  may  consider  as  possible  two  conceptions 
of  representation,  or  two  types  of  substitution.  In  the  first  instance, 
one  may  be  supposed  to  aim  at  a  perfect  identity  in  the  contents  of 
the  model  and  the  copy  —  a  case  which  might  occur,  if  anywhere,  in 
respect  to  pure  pleasure.  The  form  of  substitution  here  would  be 
the  form  which  could  obtain  between  the  different  "parts"  of  a 
homogeneous  whole.  Jevons  gives  *^  the  example  of  a  small  bit  of 
cloth  being  used  as  a  sample  of  the  whole  piece.  One  part  is  as 
good  as  any  other  part  for  immediate  experience.  The  logical 
expression  for  the  entire  system  of  internal  relations  is  just  the  law 
of  identity  A  =  A.  With  such  an  interpretation  representation 
amounts  to  nothing  but  a  vain  repetition,  or  rather  to  a  continuous 

*^Principles   of  Science,   chap,    i,   p.   9. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  69 

affective  state,  an  approach  to  hypnotic  trance,  a  quaHtatively  iden- 
tical content  in  which  the  possibiHty  of  repetition  or  variation  is 
purely  nominal  —  an  external  and  arbitrary  numerical  difference. 
In  the  other  type  of  representation  we  substitute  one  thing  in  place 
of  another  which  may  be  quite  different  for  immediate  experience  — 
as  when  a  red  light  signifies  danger.  It  is  this  kind  of  representation 
which  is  apparent  in  all  practical  activities:  in  artistic  production 
it  is  the  ability  to  present  old  material  in  new  forms  which  makes 
the  picture  of  any  worth ;  in  the  economic  world  it  is  the  possibility 
of  using  alternatives  —  of  getting  different  machinery,  using  other 
lands  or  commodities,  employing  labor  under  different  contracts  — 
which  breaks  up  the  rigidity  of  industrial  methods  and  allows  prog- 
ress ;  in  all  inventive  or  constructive  thought  the  mode  of  working 
is  precisely  this  testing  of  alternatives.  In  this  second  type  of 
representation  we  are  concerned  to  find,  not  simple  identities,  but 
the  statement  of  equivalencies  in  which  identities  appear  amid  ever- 
widening  diversities.  The  representative  must  be  not  a  sample,  but 
a  symbol.  The  possibility  of  such  vicarious  functioning  rests  upon 
the  fact  that  one  has  some  end  in  view ;  one  thing  can  be  used  for 
another  only  in  certain  respects,  is  as  good  as  another  only  for 
specific  purposes.  Speaking  generally,  the  greater  the  discrepancy 
between  sign  and  the  thing  signified,  the  more  special  and  limited 
does  the  purpose  appear  to  be.  To  say  that  glass  is  equal  to  wood 
is  quite  unintelligible  apart  from  the  purpose  of  some  mechanical 
construction  in  which  the  one  may  perform  the  same  function  as 
the  other ;  the  glass  is  a  symbol  of  a  certain  thing  to  be  done.  This 
second  kind  of  representation  may  be  called  functional,  in  contrast 
with  the  first  which  was  a  structural  or  sensorial  kind  of  reinstate- 
ment. The  second  kind,  which  aims  merely  to  continue  the  effect  of 
the  stimulus,  includes,  therefore,  all  the  desirable  types  of  response  to 
the  stimulus.  Among  these  we  may  mention  three  important  cases 
to  which  the  accurate  structural  reinstatement  does  not  do  justice: 
( I )  It  is  frequently  desired  to  reproduce  the  stimulus  in  an  enlarged 
and  embellished  form,  and  here  the  imitator  wishes  to  include 
everythmg  in  the  original  situation,  but  also  to  add  to  it.  (2)  It  is 
sometimes  convenient  to  reinstate  the  stimulus  only  in  brief;  we 
wish  the  essentials,  but  we  must  have  them  in  telegraphic  form. 
(3)  Finally  we  have  the  case  in  which  we  take  note  of  the  stimulus 
only  to  guard  against  it,  and  here  our  object  is  to  prevent  any 


70  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

Structural  imitation  at  all,  but  we  represent  the  stimulus  in  the  series 
of  averting  movements  which  it  determines. 

In  Professor  Royce's  example  of  a  thought  which  develops  its 
own  diversity  we  find  the  conception  of  ''  the  development  of  an 
Infinite  Multitude  out  of  the  Expression  of  a  Single  Purpose."*® 
We  are  told  in  the  example  to  imagine  someone  drawing  a  perfect 
map  of  England  upon  English  soil : 

One  who,  with  absolute  exactness  of  perception,  looked  down  upon  the 
ideal  map  thus  constructed,  would  see  lying  upon  the  surface  of  England,  and 
at  a  definite  place  thereon,  a  representation  of  England  on  as  large  or  as 
small  a  scale  as  you  please.  This  representation  would  agree  in  content 
with  the  real  England,  but  at  a  place  within  this  map  of  England,  there  would 
appear,  upon  a  small  scale,  a  new  representation,  which  would  repeat  in  the 
outer  portions  the  details  of  the  former,  but  upon  a  smaller  space,  would  be 
seen  to  contain  yet  another  England,  and  this  another,  and  so  on  without 
limit. 

Without  attempting  to  say  anything  about  the  logical  or  meta- 
physical merits  of  the  case,  let  us  see  what  the  psychological  impli- 
cations must  be  in  such  an  expression  of  a  purpose.  The  conception 
of  representation  as  a  statement  of  equivalencies  —  not  of  pure 
identities  —  in  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose  ought  to  be  the  check 
which  will  prevent  such  representation  from  becoming  an  infinite 
series.  As  Royce  says :  ''  This  series,  if  real,  is  inexhaustible  by 
anv  process  of  successive  procedure,  whereby  one  passes  from  one 
member  to  the  next."  ^^  But  this  must  be  just  the  standpoint  which 
psychology  takes,  namely,  that  for  the  experiencing  individual  the 
fulfilment  of  a  purpose  is  a  '*  process  of  successive  procedure, 
whereby  one  passes  from  one  member  to  the  next."  The  very  nature 
of  purpose  is  of  something  being  completed  in  time.  If  we  con- 
ceive of  the  infinite  series  of  maps  as  being  complete  all  at  the  same 
instant,  then  there  is  no  room  for  the  idea  of  progress  or  of  purpose 
—  it  is  all  there,  with  nothing  to  be  done.  If,  however,  we  suppose 
one  map  to  be  made  after  another,  then  the  process  must  continue 
forever;  and  in  this  case  we  should  have  no  progress  at  all  in 
representation,  inasmuch  as  there  would  never  be  any  completed 
copy  to  represent ;  i.  e.,  the  first  map  would  not  be  perfect  until  the 
last  one  was  done,  and  besides  every  stroke  of  the  pencil  would  leave 
as  much  more  thereby  to  be  copied  as  itself  had  just  succeeded  in 

*^The  World  and  the  Individual,  Supplementary  Essay,  pp.  502  ff. 
"^Ibid.,  p.   581. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  71 

copying,  and  we  should  not  be  approaching  an  end  at  all.  A  pur- 
pose, in  other  words,  presupposes  a  diminishing  task  ahead  of  it. 
Our  ability  to  inhibit  this  infinite  process,  to  get  a  purpose  finally 
expressed,  or  to  stop  somewhere  is  conditioned  by  the  existence  of 
some  counter-impulse,  by  the  fact  that  we  already  have  some  object 
or  last  term  in  view.  Psychologically,  therefore,  we  never  should 
have  a  purpose  expressed  as  in  Royce's  illustration.  In  the  example 
as  given  we  have  one  unique  member  in  the  infinite  series  —  the 
first  one;  every  member  of  the  series  has  the  double  character  of 
imitation  and  model,  of  copying  and  being  copied ;  but  the  first  one 
is  unique  in  that  it  does  not  copy  a  copy,  but  represents  England 
itself  —  copies  a  "  reality."  But  in  any  real  purpose  we  must  have, 
not  only  a  unique  beginning,  but  also  a  unique  end ;  we  demand  a 
second  limit,  or  a  term  which  shall  be  only  a  copy  and  not  itself 
a  model.  To  put  it  in  a  different  way,  nobody  would  ever  start  out 
to  make  a  "  perfect "  map  without  knowing  what  it  was  to  be  perfect 
for.  We  never  seek  undiflFerentiated  perfection.  Value  could  never 
emerge  in  the  course  of  the  infinite  series,  because  the  whole  of  life 
would  be  given  in  that  process,  and  the  end  of  action  must  be 
thought  of  as  eternally  attained  or  as  eternally  unattainable,  and 
never  in  actual  process  of  attainment. 

The  only  infinite  aspect  of  a  conscious  purpose  is  the  infinite 
possibility  of  differentiation,  the  unlimited  variety  of  choice  of 
means,  which  is  suggested  in  the  emotional  stage  prior  to  the  articu- 
lation of  the  judgment  or  purpose.  The  apprehension  of  infinity  is 
(to  the  mind  innocent  of  mathematics)  an  experience  m  which  the 
consciousness  of  quality  is  uppermost.  Infinity  is  for  consciousness 
another  name  for  continuity ;  it  means  infinite  possibilities,  but  not 
actualities.  The  only  way,  then,  in  which  thought  can  develop  its 
own  diversity  is  not  by  trying  to  continue  the  infinite  multitude,  but 
by  checking  it.  In  one  sense  the  infinite  multitude,  or  the  relational 
continuum,  is  given  in  feeling,  and  it  is  the  trick  of  thought  to  find 
out  the  terms  of  the  relation  and  to  limit  by  one  actual  performance 
the  infinite  possibilities  of  performance. 

To  define  representation  once  more,  then,  we  may  quote  agam 
from  Royce: 

A  thinking  process  of  the  type  here  in  question  [a  recurrent  operation  of 
thought]  recreates,  although  in  a  new  instance,  the  very  kind  of  ideal  object 
that,  by  means  of  its  process,  it  proposed  to  alter  into  some  more  acceptable 
form.'^ 

^^World  and  Individual,  p.  495. 


72  OAT  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

And  on  a  previous  page : 

Necessary  to  the  relations  of  correspondence  is  only  this,  that  you  shall 
be  able  to  view  the  two  corresponding  objects  together,  in  a  one-to-one 
relation,  or  in  some  other  definite  way,  and,  with  some  single  purpose  in 
mind,  shall  then  be  able  in  some  one  perhaps  very  limited  aspect  to  affirm 
of  one  of  them  the  same  that  you  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  limited 
sense,  affirm  of  the  other.  In  consequence,  with  reference  to  this  one  affirma- 
tion, you  could  in  some  specified  wise  substitute  one  of  them  for  the  other, 
whole  for  whole,  part  for  part,  element  for  element." 

It  is  its  character  as  substitute  which  constitutes  for  a  conscious 
content  its  objective  reference  and  its  meaning.  The  phrase  "ob- 
jective reference"  may  appear  to  be  susceptible  of  two  different 
interpretations  corresponding  to  the  two  above-mentioned  types  of 
imitation.  In  the  Lockian  type  of  theory,  knowledge  seems  to  be  a 
faint  copying  of  some  outside  system  of  real  things,  the  mind  is 
"  impressed "  by  its  environment,  and  the  validity  of  its  ideas  is 
conditioned  by  their  close  delineation,  their  point-for-point  appeal 
to  those  real  things,  by  their  success  in  importing  something  external 
into  the  knowledge-process.  The  other  sort  of  theory  would  say 
that  the  "  objective  reference  "  of  a  mental  content  is  its  facilitation 
of  a  purpose,  every  point  in  the  image  being  the  stimulus  to  some 
part  of  the  total  activity.  The  more  strenuous  our  desires,  the  more 
complicated  and  inclusive  our  purpose,  the  more  distinctly  valuable 
is  each  representative,  each  symbol,  which  keeps  that  interest 
summed  up  and  presented  before  us.  These  two  views  appear  to  be 
different,  for  the  reason  that  the  former  has  usually  been  held  to 
imply  that  the  object  is  prior  to  experience,  whereas  in  the  latter 
view  the  object  is  regarded  as  in  no  wise  given  to  experience,  but  as 
the  thing  to  be  attained  by  it.  But  the  two  modes  of  expression  seem 
to  be  reconciled  when  we  recognize  that  the  faithful  mirroring  of 
anything  need  not  mean  that  we  see  something  beyond  our  own 
consciousness ;  but  it  may  mean  that  we  steadily  contemplate  a 
situation  with  a  future  reference  in  mind,  that  certain  impression.'* 
dominate  our  thoughts,  but  that  their  objective  or  control  value  lies 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  possible  parts  of  our  future  experience.  The 
difference  in  the  two  views  is  expressed  by  Professor  Moore  as 
follows : 

But  now  comes  the  question  with  which  passive  empiricism,  sensational 
and  rational,  has  so  much  difficulty;   viz.,  the  question  of  a  standard  for  this 

'^^Ibid.,  p.  302. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  73 

completeness.  If  further  sensation  keeps  on  giving  more  reality  and  this 
stimulates  further  reconstruction  of  ideas,  at  what  point  is  verification 
reached  P*^ 

This  question  is  answered  by  the  theory  which  says  that 
the  ideal  construction  is  not  called  upon  to  copy  or  even  represent  something 
given  in  sensation,  because  nothing  is  here  given  in  sensation  but  the  demand 
for  re-coordination.  The  new  ideal  construction  is  trying  to  "agree  with 
sensation,"  not  in  the  sense  of  reproducing  something  appearing  in  it,  but 
in  the  sense  of  responding  to  the  demand  for  reorganization.  Hence  the 
idea  runs  no  risk  in  advance  of  being  false  to  the  reality  which -^  appears  in 
sensation,  because  the  only  reality  appearing  there  is  this  demand  for 
reorganization.** 

A  mental  content,  then,  has  objective  reference,  it  is  representative 
or  has  meaning,  because  it  comes  as  the  fulfilment  of  desire,  it  pre- 
supposes a  need  —  a  limit  from  which  —  and  is  itself  the  limit 
toward  which  we  move  —  it  answers  a  demand. 

^The    Functional    versus    the    Representational    Theories    of    Knowledge    in 
Locke's  Essay,  p.  53. 
'*rbid.,  p.  57- 


IV.    MEANING  UNDER  THE  EXPERIMENTAL  METHOD 

I  wish  to  make  two  points  in  this  discussion :  first,  that  experi- 
mental procedure  is  an  expression  of  all  which  is  essential  in  any 
form  of  thinking,  and  that  the  experiment  is  therefore  the  one  pre- 
eminent method  of  psychology ;  and,  second,  that  the  conduct  of  the 
experiment  gives  us  the  final  and  most  explicit  setting  for  such  a 
statement  of  value  as  that  indicated  in  the  preceding  pages. 

''Experiment''  Wundt  says,  "is  observation  connected  with  an 
intentional  interference  on  the  part  of  the  observer,  in  the  rise  and 
course  of  the  phenomena  observed."  ^^  A  broader  conception  is 
formulated  by  Professor  Cattell :  "  Common  usage,''  he  says, 
"  would  call  an  observation  made  under  artificial  conditions,  as  wnth 
instruments,  an  experiment."  ^^  And  he  accordingly  defines  experi- 
ment as  "  the  alteration  of  phenomena  or  of  the  methods  of  observing 
phenomena,  in  order  to  obtain  knowledge  regarding  them."  If  we 
agree,  then,  that  the  experiment  is  observation  under  conditions  of 
control,  or  is  experience  artificially  varied,  let  us  ask  what  is  the 
range  of  application  to  pjychic  phenomena  which  this  generally 
accepted  definition  allows.  It  is  time  to  protest,  I  think,  against 
the  narrow  limits  and  the  insignificant  role  which  are  frequently 
assigned  to  the  experiment  in  the  development  of  psychological 
concepts  and  explanations.  As  against  Sigwart,  who  says  that 
"the  experimental  methods,  however  much  they  may  contribute  to 
accurac}^  and  precision,  can  yet  have  only  a  subordinate  importance 
in  this  department   {i.  e.,  Psychology).     They  can  never  give  us 

more  than  fragments "  ^^ — Mill  and  others  concurring  —  I 

should  say  that,  as  Wundt  maintains,  there  is  no  psychic  process, 
however  complex,  to  which  it  is  not  applicable,  and  that  all  acquire- 
ment of  knowledge  is  bound  to  come  by  a  process  which  may  with 
reason  be  described  as  an  essentially  experimental  process.  Illus- 
trative of  an  indifference  toward  psychological  method  in  general 
we  find  in  Ladd: 

In  spite  of  much  debate  over  psychological  method,  we  cannot  consider 

^Outlines  of  Psychology,  Introduction,  par.  3,  p.   19. 

^Philosophical  Dictionary ,   art.   "Experiment." 

^'^ Logic  (Dendy),  Vol.  II,  p.  406. 

74 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  75 

this  question  as  worthy  of  detailed  consideration.  Indeed,  we  can  scarcely 
speak  with  propriety  of  the  method  in  psychology.  All  means  to  a  more 
accurate  and  complete  description  of  conscious  states,  and  to  the  fuller  and 
more  precise  knowledge  of  their  external  conditions  and  their  intercon- 
nections, belong  to   legitimate  psychological  method.''* 

This  is,  of  course,  very  true,  only  what  we  want  to  know  is  not 
so  much  whether  we  are  at  Hberty  to  use  "  all  means  "  in  our  power, 
as  whether  we  can  discover  in  those  means  anything  which  is  essen- 
tial and  common  to  them  all  or  anything  relevant  to  psychology 
itself.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  it  is  not  the  business  of  a  science  to 
criticise  its  tools  or  to  investigate  the  assumptions  on  which  it 
starts ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  in  a  sense  that  may  be  said  to  be  the 
whole  business  of  a  science.  It  must  start  somewhere,  and  it  is 
this  particular  "  where "  which  characterizes  the  science ;  the  use 
to  which  it  can  put  those  tools,  or  the  whole  superstructure  upon 
the  original  subsumption  is  the  immanent  criticism  of  the  original, 
accepted  categories  or  tools.  What  the  most  general  concept  of 
psychology  is,  or  what  its  principal  method  of  explanation,  are 
identical  questions  with.  What  is  our  one  great  avenue  of  psycho- 
logical information  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  some  community 
among  the  various  psychological  methods,  and  that  the  concept  of  the 
experiment  is  the  general  form  of  it;  and,  further,  that  in  psycho- 
logical treatises  the  question  of  the  ultimate  psychological  concept 
ought  to  be  no  mere  preliminary  flourish,  but  a  matter  quite  worthy 
of  detailed  consideration. 

Under  the  definition  of  experiment,  as  given  above,  we  may  con- 
ceive that  in  every  moment  of  self-awareness,  however  vague,  there 
is  implicit  the  germ  of  experimental  procedure.  It  has  become  com- 
mon to  recommend  to  our  notice  the  blindness  and  fatuity  of  those 
who  suppose  that  they  shall  be  able  to  see  without  hypotheses  and 
preconceptions  to  see  with,  and  to  point  to  the  ineptitude,  or  indeed 
the  impossibility,  of  random,  unorganized  observation.  This  is 
equal  to  the  acknowledgment  that  in  all  observation  (for  psycho- 
logical science  this  means  introspection  or  internal  observation)  there 
is  some  degree  of  preparation  or  of  supervision.  Jevons  says :  "  It 
may  readily  be  seen  that  we  pass  upward  by  insensible  gradations 
from  pure  observation  to  determinate  experiment."  ^®  That  is  to 
say,  we  pass  from  introspection  —  the  most  uncontrolled,  capricious, 

'^^Outlines  of  Descriptive  Psychology,  chap,  i,  p.  10. 
^^Principles  of  Science,  p.  400. 


76  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

subjective  —  to  experiment,  the  most  determined  and  precisely 
checked  source  of  information.  We  have  said  in  another  connection 
that  all  consciousness  is,  to  some  extent,  self-consciousness,  and  we 
may  say  here  that  all  consciousness  is,  to  some  extent,  controlled; 
no  mental  state  is  absolutely  devoid  of  the  strictures  of  self-aware- 
ness and  of  preparatory  tensions.  Introspection,  which  is  another 
name  for  self-consciousness  or  internal  observation,  is  said  to  modify 
profoundly  the  conscious  contents  of  which  it  purposes  to  give  an 
unbiased  report;  but  I  should  deny  that  any  such  contents  exist 
until  they  are  known,  and  should  say  that  the  only  distortion  which 
introspection  performs  is  to  raise  the  subconscious  into  conscious 
states.  A  similar  answer,  also,  may  be  made  to  the  precisely  analo- 
gous criticism  often  raised  against  the  psychological  experiment, 
namely,  that  the  experiment  shows  in  a  highly  artificial  light  that 
which  it  purports  to  illuminate,  inasmuch  as  laboratory  conditions 
are  not  normal  conditions  and  the  process  isolated  in  the  experiment 
is  found  normally  involved  in  very  complex  relations.  Scripture 
says : 

In  general,  we  may  say  that  the  act  of  observing  introduces  a  change  in 
the  sum  total  of  experience;  the  more  intentionally  and  systematically  we 
observe,  or  the  more  carefully  we  experiment  and  measure,  the  greater  the 
distortion  and  change  produced.** 

We  should  certainly  agree  that  the  experiment  is  a  distortion  in 
the  sense  that  it  is  not  an  exact  copy  of  anything,  but  should  deny 
that  that  is  an  objection.  There  has  been  a  change  in  experience, 
of  course,  but  that  was  exactly  what  we  were  aiming  at;  it  is  a, 
change  from  the  vague  to  the  analyzed,  the  implicit  to  the  explicit. 
The  object  of  all  reflection,  introspection,  or  scientific  endeavor  is 
to  isolate  and  abstract,  to  analyze  the  phenomenon  under  question. 
The  experimentalist  does  not  say  that  what  is  true  of  a  phenomenon 
in  isolation  is  true  of  it  in  complication  with  all  other  phenomena, 
but  what  he  attempts  to  do  is  to  lift  the  confused  complications  of 
everyday  life  into  clearly  differentiated  complications,  taking  up 
one  phase  at  a  time,  in  the  hope  to  get  finally  a  statement  of  all  the 
"valid  possibilities  of  experience"  connected  with  the  problem  he 
has  chosen.  The  experiment  is  experience,  then,  in  "definite, 
coherent,  heterogeneous  "  form.  The  difference  between  introspec- 
tion and  experimental  method  is  like  the  difference  between  savagery 
and  civilization.  Eighteenth-century  writers  were  prone  to  think 
'^The  New  Psychology,  p.   ii. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  77 

that  civilization  consisted  in  the  presence  of  a  multitude  of  external 
contrivances  and  mechanisms  which  wasted  man's  energies  without 
giving  him  any  real  rewards  —  a  condition  to  which  the  noble 
simplicity  of  man's  aboriginal  estate  seemed  highly  preferable.  But 
we  have  come  to  believe  that,  although  the  difference  between  the 
savage  and  civilized  community  may  be  symbolized  by  this  wealth 
of  external  paraphernalia,  these  media  are  but  the  outward  and 
visible  signs  which  point  to  the  inward  and  spiritual  grace  of  many 
a  precise  and  delicate  adjustment.  The  watches  and  chronoscopes, 
the  railroads  and  telegraphs,  stand  for  an  increase  in  the  possibilities 
of  regularity  and  exactness,  and  hence  of  diversity  and  of  advance- 
ment. The  experiment  intelligently  planned  is  not  an  inconsequen- 
tial plaything,  giving  at  best  a  few  trivial  measurements  which  are 
of  merely  passing  and  curious  value ;  but  it  is  the  expression  best 
available  of  all  the  conditions  of  an  adequate  observation.  The 
experiment  is  clarified  experience.  The  criterion  of  the  experiment 
is  not  the  amount  of  physical  mechanism  which  it  involves  (although 
I  should  hesitate  to  say  that  there  could  be  any  control  which  was 
perfectly  free  of  reference  to  physical  media),  but  it  is  the  degree  of 
foresight  and  of  provision  made  for  the  outcome. 

Relevant  to  the  fundamental  significance  of  experimental  method 
are  the  words  of  Bacon : 

Nee  manus  nuda  nee  intelleetus  sibi  permissus  multum  valet;  instru- 
mentis  et  auxiliis  res  perficitur;  quibus  opus  est  non  minus  ad  intellectum 
quam  ad  manum.  Atque  ut  instrumenta  manus  motum  aut  cient  aut  regunt 
ita  et  instrumenta  mentis  intellectui  aut  suggerunt  aut  cavent.®^ 

The  following  also  from  Scripture: 

This  principle  can  be  summed  up  as  a  deep  distrust  of  man's  mind 
when  left  to  itself,  but  a  firm  belief  in  its  reliability  when  working  in  true 
comradeship  with  carefully  determined  facts ."^ 

And  finally,  Wundt's  standpoint,  that  only  the  experimental  method 
is  applicable  to  the  facts  of  individual  psychology,  because  those 
facts  are  processes  and  not  permanent  objects,  and  that  this  method 
is  feasible  throughout,  there  being  no  phases  of  consciousness  with 
which  it  cannot  cope.^^ 

In  order  to  insist  more  in  detail  upon  the  adequacy  of  the  experi- 

^^Novum  Organum,  Part  II,  Aphorism  2. 

"^Op.  cit.,  chap.   I,  p.  2. 

'^Outlines  of  Psychology,  Introduction,  sec.  3. 


78  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

ment  to  serve  as  a  fundamental  category,  let  us  see  whether  it  can 
be  made  to  harmonize  the  requirements  set  by  the  three  preceding 
conceptions  of  method.  For  the  present,  we  will  keep  to  the  case  in 
which  the  experimenter  is  his  own  subject.  It  is  obvious  at  once 
that  in  such  an  instance  as,  say,  a  reaction  experiment  there  are 
present  all  the  differentice  of  the  volitional  process.  There  is  in  the 
planning  and  arranging  of  the  mode  of  procedure  an  elaborate  and 
detailed  anticipation  of  the  experimenter's  own  reaction  experience 
(the  experiment,  as  I  take  it,  includes  the  whole  process,  from  the 
first  inchoate  projection  of  a  plan  to  the  complete  setting  up  of  the 
apparatus  and  the  final  discharge  or  the  observation  for  which  the 
scheme  was  planned).  The  elimination  of  possible  interferences 
and  all  the  precautions  which  provide  for  the  greatest  concentration 
of  attention  —  e.  g.,  the  warning  bells  immediately  before  the  stimu- 
lus is  given  —  assist  in  the  ideational  preparation  for  the  act.  The 
reversal  in  direction,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  voluntary  as 
against  involuntary  discharge,  is  presented  here  in  the  fact  that 
the  whole  plan  of  the  experiment  has  been  guided  by  the  nature  of 
the  final  act  to  be  observed.  That  final  term  has  been  the  object 
toward  which  all  the  details  have  pointed,  and  the  preparation  of  the 
details  and  the  conditions  has  been  an  elaboration  of  a  scheme  of 
self-stimulation,  a  definite  working  out  of  intention,  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  the  essential  nature  of  foresight.  Every  true  experiment 
is  undertaken  in  answer  to  some  definite  question,  takes  rise  in  some 
necessity;  it  stands,  therefore,  as  the  expression  of  a  purpose  in 
which  the  reaction  of  the  subject  as  an  analyzed,  isolated,  clarified 
expression  marks  the  final  step  or  the  goal.  Conversely,  also,  any 
experiment  undertaken  without  definite  purpose  or  systematic  fore- 
thought runs  every  risk  of  proving  futile  and  meaningless. 

In  terms  of  the  discriminative  process  we  should  recognize  that 
the  experiment  is  an  attempt  to  provide  for  the  detection  of  finer 
shades  of  experience  or  narrower  limits  for  the  continuum  of  feeling ; 
for  instance,  in  discrimination  within  the  blue-green  series  the 
object  of  the  experiment  is  so  to  arrange  experience  that  points 
which  have  hitherto  been  undifferentiated  within  that  continuum 
shall  themselves  become  the  limits.  In  order  at  this  point  to  bring 
the  volitional  and  discriminative  statements  a  little  more  closely 
together,  it  should  be  pointed  out  that  the  physiological  occasion  of 
every  discrimination  is  the  clash  of  two  or  more  reflexes.     In  the 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  79 

color  experience,  where  two  shades  very  nearly  alike  are  presented, 
the  habit  of  seeing  things  blue  and  the  habit  of  seeing  things  green 
try  each  to  appropriate  the  whole  experience;  so  that  we  get  first 
the  one-term  emotional  state  of  blue-green  in  which  we  cannot  say 
which  thing  is  blue  and  which  green,  but  in  which  we  nevertheless 
have  the  emotional  nucleus  of  the  new  discriminative  adjustment. 
At  length  the  two  definite  limits  emerge;  this  one  is  blue  and  that 
one  green ;  i.  e.,  we  have  a  complete  perception  of  the  two  habits 
adjusted  in  a  new  relation  —  as  limiting  a  narrower  continuum.  In 
a  more  complex  situation  we  would  say  that  every  such  limit  is  a 
point  in  the  rearranged  plan  of  action  —  a  member,  element,  or 
stimulus  in  the  intention  or  completed  scheme  of  discharge. 

Experimentation  is  representative  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a  ques- 
tioning, an  examination,  or  an  analysis  of  the  stimulus ;  it  is  a  rein- 
statement of  the  stimulus  (  i.  e.,  of  the  first,  inadequate,  confused 
experience)  in  emphasized  and  distiaguished  form.  The  experiment 
effects  this  reinstatement  of  original  stimuli  in  that  it  symbolizes  all 
our  feeling,  conjecture,  and  past  experience  upon  the  matter  in 
hand.  If  our  purpose  is  concerned  with  a  tone-experience,  then  we 
must  bear  in  mind  all  the  conditions  which  we  have  reason  to  sup- 
pose are  relative  to  tone-experience.  As  Jevons  says :  "  The  great 
method  of  experiment  consists  in  removing,  one  at  a  time,  each  of 
those  conditions  which  may  be  imagined  to  have  an  influence  on 
the  result."^*  In  eliminating  fatigue,  practice,  and  distraction,  and 
in  keeping  constant  the  timbre,  pitch,  intensity,  or  locality  of  the 
sound,  as  the  case  demands,  we  are  effecting  a  functional  reinstate- 
ment of  our  past  experience.  The  experiment,  to  be  reliable,  should 
stand  as  a  complete  summary  or  symbol  of  all  our  information  upon 
that  subject.  The  experiment  always  has  an  objective  reference,  not 
as  a  literal  copy,  but  as  a  symbol  of  ordinary  experience.  The  per- 
fectly equipped  laboratory  would  present  a  one-to-one  correspond- 
ence with  the  totality  of  human  events ;  it  would  stand  for  the  possi- 
bility of  reproducing  in  some  symbolized  form  or  other  every 
conscious  process  in  the  world.  To  try  to  imagine  the  actual  per- 
formance of  such  exhaustive  experimentation,  however,  would  be 
to  involve  ourselves  again  in  an  infinite  series.  It  could  never  be  our 
object  to  submit  the  whole  of  experience  to  experimental  procedure, 
any  more  than  it  could  be  our  purpose  ever  to  draw  a  map  of  Eng- 

^Principles  of  Science,  p.  417. 


8o  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

land  which  should  be  perfect  in  general  or  absolutely  perfect.  The 
experiment  is  significant,  because  it  answers  a  definite  need  and  is 
undertaken  for  some  specific,  concrete  purpose. 

That  aspect  of  the  experiment  which  gives  it  a  peculiar  prestige 
in  modern  estimation  is  the  objective  validity  with  which  it  invests 
the  subjective  experience  of  an  individual.  It  is  the  central  achieve- 
ment of  modern,  as  contrasted  with  ancient,  thought  that  it  can  give 
to  the  subjective  individual  such  an  independent  or  objective  status 
that  he  may  become  the  instrument  of  progress  to  the  community. 
Through  the  freedom  of  the  individual,  society  becomes  self- 
regenerative,  provides  for  its  own  reform.  The  existence  of  indi- 
vidual psychology  as  a  science,  the  value  accorded  to  particular  sub- 
jective experience,  is  one  piece  of  evidence  to  that  fact.  The  experi- 
ment has  become  for  the  modern  world  what  the  syllogism  was  for 
ancient  and  mediaeval  speculation  —  the  one  organ  of  knowledge 
in  which  an  almost  unlimited  confidence  is  to  be  placed.  The  attain- 
ment, therefore,  of  psychology  to  the  experimental  stage  is  the  final 
step  which  gives  its  results  a  full  objective  cogency.  It  is  some- 
times felt  that  the  comparative  method  in  psychology  and  the 
objective  method  (i.  e.,  the  method  concerned  with  investigation  of 
the  historic  crystallizations  of  mind^^  in  institutions,  language,  art, 
religion,  etc.)  enjoy  the  special  distinction  of  giving  to  psychology 
a  more  impersonal  standpoint  and  a  more  objective  criterion  of  mind, 
because  they  seem  to  deal  with  a  more  permanent  and  fixed  subject- 
matter.  But  this  does  not  in  reality  distinguish  them  from  the 
experimental  method ;  they  are  rather  an  extension  of  that  method 
into  special  fields. 

We  used  above,  for  the  sake  of  simplicity,  the  case  in  which 
the  experimenter  served  as  his  own  subject.  I  think  it  can  be 
shown  now  that  the  nature  of  the  experiment  is  not  essentially 
different  whether  the  operator  uses  himself  or  another  person  as 
his  subject,  and,  further,  that  this  latter  possibility  —  i.  e.,  the 
possibility  of  two  persons  co-operating  in  the  same  thought  —  is 
the  guarantee  of  the  objectivity  of  the  method.  For  the  first  point, 
then,  when  the  operator  is  laying  out  a  plan  in  which  he  is  to  be  his 
own  subject,  he  views  himself  in  an  impersonal  way  as  a  member 
of  a  class  any  one  of  whom  might  be  the  subject;  he  treats  his 
reacting  self  as  wholly  outside  his  stimulating  self,  and  the  reacting 

"'See  Dewey,  Psychology,  chap,  i,  p.  ii. 


OF  T'A 


yWiVERSli      ) 


or 

THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  8i 

self  responds  as  to  another  person.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the' 
operator  works  with  another  person,  he  must  interpret  the  actions 
of  his  subject  in  terms  of  his  (the  operator's)  own  consciousness, 
and  the  subject  must  appreciate  his  own  reactions  from  the  oper- 
ator's point  of  viw  to  the  extent  that  he  really  understands  and 
follows  directions.  The  record  of  either  of  the  experiments  is  then 
a  record  valid  and  objective  for  all  persons ;  for  it  may  serve  both 
to  recall  to  one  person  his  own  former  state,  and  to  render  possible 
a  like  experience  in  another  mind.  Its  results,  in  other  words,  are 
communicable.  If  we  may  state  the  criterion  of  the  objectivity  or 
the  universal  validity  of  a  given  material  to  be  the  possibility  which 
it  supports  of  a  division  of  labor  being  put  upon  it  —  that  is,  the 
opportunity  which  it  offers  of  several  minds  being  consciously  em- 
ployed upon  different  phases  of  the  same  problem  —  then  we  may 
say  that  the  psychological  experiment  meets  the  requirement  as  fully 
as  could  be  desired. 

In  Bradley's  logic  a  suggestive  comparison  is  offered  between 
experiment  and  inference.  The  point  is  ably  condensed  by  Bosan- 
quet  as  follows: 

The  doctrine  which  Mr.  Bradley  founds  on  his  rejection  of  the  syllogism 
is  briefly  and  roughly  this :  every  inference  is  a  process  of  construction,  fol- 
lowed by  a  result  in  the  shape  of  a  perception,  etc.*" 

And: 

I  wish  to  examine  the  idea  conveyed  by  this  comparison  of  inference,  or 
of  a  stage  in  inference,  to  experiment.  Supposal  is  experiment,  as  I  under- 
stand, because  (i)  it  is  an  operation  upon  the  real,  (2)  is  not  yet  judgment, 
but  preparatory  to  judgment,  (3)  is  voluntary,  made  for  a  purpose.*" 

Neglecting  the  very  interesting  discussion  which  Bosanquet  enters 
into,  I  should  go  on  to  say  that  the  experiment  corresponds,  not 
to  the  merely  preparatory  stage  of  inference,  but  to  the  whole  pro- 
cess—  the  preparatory  stage  plus  the  final  perception  or  intention. 
The  experiment  is  the  observation  made  under  conditions  of  control. 
The  experiment  operates  upon  the  real  in  that  it  involves  both 
internal  and  external  changes,  and  makes  intimate  use  of  physical 
media;  it  is  occupied,  as  has  been  said,  with  construction  and 
preparation  for  the  final  judgment,  and  it  is  made  for  a  purpose. 
The  experiment,  like  inference,  is  voluntary  in  that  we  can  decide 
what  sort  of  inference  we  are  going  to  be  concerned  about,  or  what 

'"'^Knowledge  and  Reality,  chap.  6,  p.  275.  "''Ibid.,  p.   291. 


82  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

type  of  experiment  we  are  going  to  make;  we  can  choose,  that  is 
to  say,  the  questions  we  are  going  to  ask;  but  experiment,  again 
Hke  inference,  cannot  choose  what  result  it  will  get;  the  perception 
and  the  conclusion  are  forced  upon  us. 

In  what  form,  now,  does  value  emerge  in  a  case  of  experimental 
procedure?  As  we  have  already  hinted,  the  meaning  of  the  con- 
scious content  or  modification  lies  in  the  amount  of  preparatory 
labor  which  it  can  command.  This  preparation  of  the  conditions  is 
the  only  part  of  the  inferential  or  inventive  process,  or  of  the  per- 
ception of  new  relations,  which  we  control.  New  thoughts  "  occur  " 
to  us,  inventions  "come,"  we  have  flashes  of  insight,  we  suddenly 
"find"  ourselves  seeing  or  understanding  that  which  before  we 
had  not  seen  or  understood.  The  last  term,  final  perception,  seems 
to  be  the  given  thing ;  this,  then,  is  the  thing  to  be  valuated,  and  it 
finds  its  meaning  in  the  attitude  of  the  mind  which  receives  it.  This 
attitude  of  readiness  may  be  described  as  the  having  at  hand 
numerous  well-disciplined  habits,  responsive  to  slight  suggestions, 
or  as  facility  in  classification.  It  is  a  mood  which  means  a  certain 
openness  to  the  unknown  —  a  willingness  to  submit  to  some  amount 
of  irrelevant  impression,  to  harbor  a  mass  of  floating  detail,  so  to 
speak,  for  the  sake  of  the  chances  offered  —  a  habit  of  thought 
which  is  literally  mental  speculation.  This  readiness  for  a  new 
determination  when  it  comes  may  be  called  the  excitement  of  the 
apperceiving  mass  which  is  to  receive  the  impression.  Meaning, 
within  the  psychological  experiment,  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  setting 
is  prepared  for  the  final  term.  An  experimentum  crucis  is  defined 
as  "  an  experiment  so  arranged  that  its  results  will  be  final  or  crucial 
in  solving  a  problem."  ^^  We  may  say  that  every  complete  experi- 
ment aims  to  be  a  crucial  one,  and  to  have  its  final  term  invested 
with  all  the  significance  which  the  complete  solution  of  a  problem 
gives.  The  apparatus  as  it  appears  to  the  subject,  the  directions 
which  he  receives  from  the  operator,  his  preliminary  performances, 
are  all  to  him  the  methods  or  means  to  the  object ;  they  are  the 
content  to  which  the  new  impression  or  the  result  finally  gives  point 
and  direction.  Since  in  the  experiment  we  consciously  induce  that 
readiness  to  receive  the  final  impression,  and  since  we  resort  to 
physical  symbols  with  which  to  do  it,  we  might  call  the  experiment 
an  objectification  of  the  apperceiving  mass  into  which  the  new  thing 

"^Baldwin's    Dictionary. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  VALUE  83 

must  sink.  The  experimental  conditions,  as  the  results  of  past 
experience,  are  constitutive  of  the  element  of  familiarity  or  con- 
stancy which  renders  the  new  thing  apprehensible,  gives  it  back- 
ground. Apart  from  a  knowledge  of  the  conditions  under  which 
they  are  got,  the  results  of  an  experiment  are  perfectly  worthless,  or 
even  untrue.  The  mere  statement  of  statistics  apart  from  their 
setting  has  no  more  meaning  than  a  sensation  stimulus  apart  from 
the  apperceiving  mind. 


By  way  of  conclusion  to  the  several  preceding  ways  of  expres- 
sing self-control  and  its  bearing  upon  the  problem  of  meaning,  we 
may  reiterate  the  doctrine  that  the  experimental  method  exhibits 
in  the  most  adequate  and  comprehensible  form  the  phenomena  of 
self-control.  Experimentation  is  not  constituted  by  having  machines 
or  apparatus  about;  but  when  we  do  find  a  psychological  problem 
which  can  be  effectively  expressed  and  governed  through  external, 
tangible,  physical  media,  we  have  then  found  a  typical  instance  of  the 
relation  of  mind  to  matter  and  of  how  each  gives  meaning  to  the 
other.  In  the  pursuance  of  any  investigation  the  laboratory  sur- 
roundings give  to  the  psychic  act  its  local  habitation  or  its  setting  in 
external  reality.  Those  particular  nails  and  sticks  and  screens  are 
part  of  the  means  or  method  of  its  production ;  they  are  its  present 
content  or  meaning,  just  as  the  physical  universe  in  general  is  the 
content  and  meaning,  the  reference,  of  our  everyday  thought.  That 
is  the  one  side,  and  the  other  is  obvious,  namely,  that  it  is  the 
psychic  act  which  gives  point  or  significance  to  that  peculiar  aggre- 
gate of  appliances  used  in  the  experiment.  The  most  generalized 
expression  of  a  completed  instance  of  self-control  may  be  given,  in 
the  words  of  Stout,  as  "a  determination  of  the  whole  self  by  the 
whole  self."  In  order  to  arrive  at  this  statement,  let  us  begin  by  say- 
ing that  man's  greatest  satisfaction,  and  the  final  end  of  all  his  effort, 
is  to  give  himself  adequate  or  precise  expression.  When  he  can 
reduce  his  inmost  thoughts  and  airiest  fancies  to  outward,  tangible 
forms,  when  every  modulation  of  passion  has  its  differential  cor- 
respondent in  some  particular  turn  of  the  verse,  the  statue,  or  the 
formula  (i,  e.,  in  some  objective  medium  which  in  itself  is  to  him 
indifferent),  then  he  has  reached  a  goal.  I  say  that  the  medium 
must  be  indifferent  in  itself,  for  if  this  were  not  so,  it  must 
suggest  some  further  interest  or  possibility  of  action,  which  in 


84  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MEANING 

its  turn  would  require  further  expression.  The  highest  abstractions 
(involving  the  most  indifferent  symbols)  in  which  men  do  express 
themselves  are  perhaps  the  equations  of  mathematics.  Hence  our 
final  ideal  of  a  completed  self-control  will  take  the  form  of  an 
equation  of  the  self  with  the  self.  The  self  is  in  complete  possession 
of  the  self,  intention  is  equal  to  fulfilment,  the  ideal  to  the  real, 
self  =  self,  or  a  perfect  determination  of  the  self  by  the  self. 

In  giving  ourselves  complete  expression  our  procedure  may  be 
called  a  working  out  of  our  permanent  possibilities  of  control,  or  a 
reduction  of  our  problems  to  their  solution  in  fixed  reflexes  or 
habits.  Of  value  at  large  let  us  say  that  we  find  its  index  in  the 
permanent  guarantees  of  control  which  we  find  in  the  world  about 
us.  The  civil  law  is  valid  because  we  can  rely  upon  it  to  secure 
certain  uniform  results ;  the  roads  and  bridges,  tables  and  chairs, 
which  we  use  have  value  because  they  stand  for  the  control  of  cer- 
tain reactions,  we  have  well-grounded  expectations  concerning  them. 
These  things  do  not  as  they  stand  constitute  our  values,  for  value 
appears  only  in  the  active  use  of  them,  but  they  are  our  indices.  In 
psychological  language  the  index  of  values  is  to  be  found  in  the 
permanent  possibilities  of  control  which  we  call  habit  or  character. 
The  conscious  concomitant  of  character  is  the  recurrent  feeling  or 
the  dominant  emotional  tone  which  pervades  one's  Avhole  activity. 
Emotion  and  character  are  signs  or  clues  to  our  meanings,  signs 
which  are  present  as  well  in  every  trivial  commonplace  pursuit  as  in 
the  great  cataclysmic  emotions  which  reflect  the  larger  systems  of 
interest  and  thought  running  through  our  whole  lives;  but  these 
symbols  find  their  application  and  reference,  their  meaning  emerges, 
only  amid  the  strains  and  stresses  of  unrealized  ideals  and  ungratified 
wants  —  in  the  still  open  process  of  gaining  self-control. 


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